The Devil's Dream: Waking Up (18 page)

M
atthew hauled
the wrecked body he owned once again back to his van. He looked behind himself the whole way, making sure the deranged woman in the CVS hadn't decided to follow him out and give him a nice knife wound to go along with the rest of the ailments he faced. She stayed in her place and that was good, one knife stabbing was enough for Matthew—at least in this lifetime.

He opened the door and climbed into the van, actually having to climb, holding on with one hand while he tried to heave the rest of his body up a foot.

His own stupid pride had put him in this situation. He could have blown the world to hell a week ago and not be struggling with this pathetic excuse of a human for control over this carcass. It didn't matter though, he wasn't going to run from his pride this time. He was going to embrace it and finish this goddamn thing the way he had intended. Fifty-five bodies. Not a single one less. He had already told the dealers he needed to replace the bodies that Morgant ruined, although not in those words, of course. That stretched the pick-up date out, but it had finally arrived: tomorrow, and that meant he had just enough time to get this old van moving for the three-hundred mile drive.

Morgant. He was shoved down deep for now. Completely overwhelmed just like when Matthew first showed up. It wouldn't last forever and Matthew knew it. He had a day, a single day to get this thing done—tops. After that, he was finished here. He'd been able to come back this final time, but there wouldn't be another. If Morgant took over again, that was it. Morgant would shuffle around on this world until his body just completely fell apart. Matthew had one day. Three hundred miles there, three hundred miles back, hang up—somehow—the bodies, and then set the whole thing off. He looked down at the watch on his left wrist. It was three in the afternoon. By three tomorrow, this whole place, from Boston to Beijing, would be in darkness.

Matthew could work for twenty-four more hours, and then he could rest forever.

* * *

T
he lights turned
on and Joe woke up. At least he thought he woke up, he couldn't tell anymore. People were here though, people different from the ones hanging naked around him. No one stood at the door, waiting like usual, they simply started moving to the walls, snipping the binds of each person. Someone came for Joe and released him, where he fell immediately to the ground. He felt blood trying to force its way back into his shoulders but he didn't move, didn't scream out. He only laid there, his cheek pressed against the tiled floor that he had probably pissed on a few hours before.

Then someone lifted up, and pressed chains on his ankles while they pulled his arms behind his back and a slapped a zip tie on his wrists.

This was it. He was being moved finally and found that he didn't care. Hanging up on that wall or being herded out of this place, to Brand or to someone else, it was all the same.

He thought that—looking at the world with a numbness that turned everything to gray—until the black man entered the room.

He looked different than the one Jake had seen on television. His body resembled a stroke victim, like all of the wires stemming from his brain weren't matching up correctly to the rest of his body. The man wore a hat, had brown eyes, and a beard that the televisions didn't show, but he didn't need to see an ID to know who stood at the door. He didn't need a DNA test to know that underneath that black skin rested Matthew Brand's brain. The room seemed to spark as soon as he walked in, an intensity that had been missing, even with all of these thugs cutting people down from the walls. The man moved like one of his legs didn't work, but still he moved with a ferocity no one else in the room matched. The man at the door was a man who wanted something. Not money. Not promotions. Not any kind of external validation. The man at the door wanted something that burned from within.

Joe thought that it didn't matter what happened to him, but when he saw Matthew Brand, hidden in someone else's body, he realized that was only the darkness of his room—of the past four years—clouding his vision. This was the man that killed Patricia. The man that killed Jason. The man that started all of this and the one Joe had chased across the country. Joe couldn't stand on his own feet, but he was finally in front of the person he had wanted to see since watching his wife's life flow out of her neck. Joe was going to ride somewhere with this man, and when they got there, Manning would show up and bullet holes would dot Brand's face. All the energy he moved around with now would drain out of his body, drain out on the ground, and then, all of this could be over.

* * *

E
very bump
in the road felt like a tiny earthquake in the back of the van. Joe didn't care. They threw him in with twenty different people. He felt their arms and legs over his own body, but he could still breathe, so it didn't matter. He wasn't trying to move yet, but he was flexing his muscles. Trying to gain some control over them, to warm them up, if possible. He didn't know if he would need to move, didn't know what he would need to do at all, but he wanted to be prepared if the time came. Manning was supposed to do the killing; Joe was only leading the weapons to Brand.

Weeks had felt like years and Joe accepted death during them. In the van, his body aching from the shimmers moving upwards from the wheels, he finally felt alive. The air he breathed wasn't stale and full of the ghosts of dead people next to him. He felt flesh on his own, even if it was the most disgusting human contact he'd ever known.

Oh, let me die, but let me watch the motherfucker up front die first.

Joe smiled. He smiled wide, his teeth grinning up at the van's ceiling above him, ready to take on the world.

"
T
he more I
think about it, the more I think the country should give you a medal for what you did," Pete Deschaine said. “Ridiculous that they’re looking to protect a criminal with what’s going on right now. With what you’re working on.”

Jake didn’t say anything. Didn’t know what to say.

"How's your boss?" His dad asked after a few seconds.

"He's out, hopping around like a rabbit,” Jake answered, glad to talk about anything besides Manning. “I don't know, seeing Brand like that kind of energized him. Scared him, but energized him too. He says the guy is gone. Like, really gone. Like, might be about to light the fuse to the whole thing or might be lying in a ditch dead somewhere. Art's reading everything that comes across his desk though. He's not even asking me to give him the highlights. Everything that they send him, he's digging into."

"Still nothing though?" Pete asked.

"No. The bait we've got set up hasn't moved, so that most likely means Brand hasn't shown up yet. Art's reading everything but he knows our best chance is the bait."

"No other ideas, huh?"

Jake leaned back in the chair. No other ideas. That was the thing. He had run out of them, out of steam. He was like Art now, managing, reacting, rather than acting. He had nothing; he couldn't even see the corners to think around. "No. Nothing, which scares me. What if he doesn't pick up the bait? What if he's doing something else or simply decides he doesn't need anyone else?"

"He won't. It's going to work, so don't start worrying about that. You're not thinking up any more ideas because you don't need any more. You've got the winner, Jake. Just be ready to move when it's time."

The door to Jake's office flew open, slamming against the wall behind it. Jake looked up, hearing the bang of the metal against the wood. Art stood in the doorway, his face still bruised up and a plastic cast over his left cheek, but smiling. Jake had a second to realize how much that must hurt him, to be standing here smiling with a broken face. "Get off the phone. Welch is moving. Let's go."

Jake dropped the cell phone to his desk, forgetting his father completely.

* * *

I
t was
Joe's turn and he felt Brand grab his feet. He was pulled across the van and dumped out onto the gravel below. His head whipped down to the ground and bounced back up, the rocks biting into his flesh. He watched Brand look back into the van, probably counting the number of people still inside. There weren't many. Five maybe.

Joe saw Brand's face, the moon shining down on it. A drop of blood stemmed from his eye, the trail curving down across his cheek. The brown contacts Brand wore when he picked them up were gone now, his blue eyes back. His body looked worse than it did a few hours ago, but those eyes burned. Even with blood dripping from them, there was something inside his head crackling, an energy that Joe had not seen before, that Joe could never match.

Brand looked down at him, tilting his head to the side a bit as if he should know the person below him but didn't. Joe didn't say anything, just stared back at him.

The blood tear fell to the ground, staining a rock next to Joe's face.

Brand turned around, his back facing Joe. "Shut up. Shut the fuck up," he said to the night air. Joe blinked, looking around Brand's back, trying to find who he was talking to. He heard nothing besides Brand's own voice, no one talking, no one that
could
shut up.

"It's not his time yet. It's not your time yet," Brand said. He turned around then looking back down at Joe. "Do you hear her?"

Joe's eyes were wide and his mouth opened some. Brand was asking
him
, asking him if he heard whatever was going on inside Brand’s head.

"She won't stop. She hasn't stopped for the past two hours." He still cocked his head in that weird way and, intensity or not, Joe knew the person before him wasn't the same one that showed up at his house four years prior. The man here was insane. The man here had lost control, whatever control Brand ever actually had. The lighthouse to Joe's right probably contained things that no human had ever seen because no human had ever imagined that such things could exist. All of it coming from this man's mind, and this man's mind no longer functioned. Not as it should.

"I don't hear her," Joe said, his voice a raspy whisper. He didn't know why he answered. For the past four years Joe had been sure of everything. He had been sure of the drug, sure of the constant search, sure that Brand was alive. He had been sure when he went to Boston, sure when he searched out the prostitute, and sure when he signed up to play this role. He had even been sure, in a very different way, that death was preferable to life when he hung inside the dark room for those few weeks. Now, looking at the man above him, he didn't feel sure of anything. He had come here for his wife, for his son, to kill this man. To make sure he avenged their deaths. But that was based on another person, a person that...that had not been dealt the pain they deserved. A person that escaped justice for crimes nearly too heinous to put into words. A person that took and took and took and never had a goddamn thing taken from him. Joe knew life's purpose when he was chasing
that
person.

But that person didn't exist. Joe didn't know where he had gone, what had happened to him, but he knew the one above him held a host of demons different from the person Joe wanted.

"You'll hear her. You'll hear her soon. And if you don't, I still will. She won't go away and neither will he. Both of them, all the time, just yelling at me to relent." Brand stared out into the distance as he spoke. The man had a purchased sex slave lying on the ground, with five more still in his van, and he was looking out onto a field speaking about people inside his head.

"Are you going to?" Joe asked. "Relent?"

Brand looked down again, his eyes wide like he was seeing Joe for the first time. "For them? No, not for them. Not for anyone."

He reached down then with his right arm, his left one only hung at his side. He reached around Joe's midsection and lifted, groaning as he did, and finally throwing Joe up over his shoulder like a sack of grain. He stood once he had Joe settled, breathing heavy, his left arm still not moving.

"No, I'm not going to relent. A few more hours. That's all I need."

Joe said nothing, but Brand didn't start moving. He stood, breathing, and Joe could feel his entire upper body heaving with the air he sucked in. There was a watery sound to the air that Brand breathed out.

Why had Joe come here? What had he thought he would do to this man? Kill him? Had everything been about something so simple as that? Kill this man who was almost dead. Who could barely step forward without falling over. Joe didn't know where Manning was but he knew that it wouldn't take an army to show up here and free him. It would take one man and a baseball bat, then the whole operation would end in twenty seconds. All of this, everything he had put himself through, to get to this man in order to kill him, and Brand might not make it to the door of the lighthouse alive. Joe laughed, tears coming to his eyes. Everything he had done and the result was that he could do nothing worse to this man than what was already happening to him. Brand had put himself through a hell that Joe didn't even understand. A hell that even his wife's death hadn't allowed him to enter.

Brand stopped his heavy breathing. "Why are you laughing?"

"Do you know who I am?" Joe asked.

Brand was silent for a long time. Three minutes maybe, both of them outside in the cool air. "You're Joseph Welch," Brand said finally.

Joe didn't say anything back. Somehow, even with his fucked up head, Brand had connected Joe's face through four years of blood and death back to that single night.

"Did you come here to try and kill me?" Brand asked, holding onto Joe.

"Yes. That was the plan."

"Do you think you'll be able to?"

Joe didn't know where Manning was or how long it would take him to get here. He didn't know anything of what was going on inside the lighthouse before him. He didn't know anything except the man that killed his wife now carried Joe on his shoulder. Still, though, if Manning got here, then yes, Brand was a dead man. There wasn't any way he could fight what Manning would bring. There wasn't any way he could fight anyone besides people bound and weakened through weeks of torture.

"Yeah, I think I will," Joe answered. The tears filling his eyes splashed over to his cheeks, realizing he didn’t know if he even wanted to anymore. Realizing that all of this had been for nothing. That the man carrying him had done much, much worse to himself than Joe could ever hope to do. Patricia's death, Jason's death, all of it had been avenged and Joe need not have lifted a finger. If the man dragged Joe inside and hooked him up to whatever machine he planned to destroy the sun with, and then actually accomplished it, Joe didn't care—not really. None of this was about saving the world. It was about making Brand pay.

The man was alone and dying, mentally as well as physically. He wept blood and didn't seem to know it. He had no one except the women and men he paid for, no one here to be with him as he died. He was alone, more alone than even Joe. Because Joe had his brother. Joe had people that he could call if he wanted. Brand had this lighthouse and the person he carried over his shoulder. Nothing else. No possibilities of anything else, either.

"Well let's go inside and see if you can. I'll leave you for last." Matthew Brand took a step forward, planting his foot firmly on the loose gravel before dragging his left one behind.

* * *

B
rand dropped
Joe to the floor.

Joe looked around, stunned, silent, at what was before him. Brand grabbed one of the women on the floor and dragged her to a ladder. Joe watched him for a second as he struggled to lift the woman to his shoulder and then began a slow ascent up the ladder.

With his eyes, he followed the line that Brand would take if he actually made it to the top. Three poles jutted out of a ring and this woman would hang there. Like all the rest. Like all the other people in this horrible, horrible place. How many were there? Joe tried to count, but there were too many, all of them wrapping around the massive pole rising up from the floor. Lights illuminated the building all the way to the top, and as Joe looked around, he saw Jeffrey Dillan. Or what had once been Jeffrey Dillan. The man looked like a melted candle now, all white, his muscles sagging into flesh that no longer held any firmness. Naked, hair long, nails growing unchecked.

Joe moved his eyes through the people, one by one, realizing that this was hell on Earth. That Brand did something worse than anything Joe could have planned. A holocaust rested in front of Joe. A mind so far deranged that it might not even be human any longer. How could he have done this? How could he have dreamed this up? What rage? What pain? In Joe's darkest moments he only thought of slitting Brand's throat, only thought of hurting Brand the way that he had hurt Patricia. This, though—this was different. This was people hanging, alive with hair and nails growing long, blinded by wires inserted into their eyes, and large plastic tubes shoved down their throats.

This was The Devil's House.

Brand shrieked on the ladder, having traveled maybe twenty feet upwards. He still held the woman, but Joe saw he was shaking, saw his body wanting to fall, wanting to collapse back to the ground. Still, with one arm, he lunged upwards, continuing his climb.

"NO!" Brand shouted, his water filled scream echoing down to Joe.

"Hey!"

The second voice came from Joe's right and he looked over.

Oh dear God, how had he missed this? A man, or maybe a boy—someone young, hung from an actual crucifix. Joe looked at the spikes driven through his hands and feet. He hung in the air, wires attached to the wood, his hands splayed out to either side like some kind of damned angel. What was this? What had happened inside this building?

"Can you hear me?" The boy shouted from the cross.