The Loveliest Dead (32 page)

Jenna reached over and turned on her bedside lamp. The three figures that had been standing at the foot of the bed disappeared. She looked around the room. The bottom drawer of the chest in her closet was open again. The bowling ball in its bag had been pushed aside.
 

She thought about David walking in his sleep—
driving
in his sleep—and threw the covers aside and got out of bed. She put on her robe as she hurried out of the bedroom with bare feet.
 

Miles’s bedroom door was open. His overhead light lit up a section of the hallway.

The bathroom was dark and unoccupied.

Jenna went downstairs and turned on the hall light without slowing her pace. She went down the hall and into the kitchen. There were no lights on, so she flipped the switch just inside the door and the rectangular fluorescent overhead flickered on.
 

The Mag-Lite stood undisturbed beside the locked back door. The laundry room was dark, the basement door closed.

She went through the dining room into the living room, where it was still warm from the remaining embers in the fireplace. Martha was asleep on the couch. Jenna checked the front door, made sure the deadbolt was still locked, then went back through the dining room and kitchen and into the laundry room, where she turned on the light. She opened the door to the garage, reached out, and turned on the light. The pickup and Toyota were both there.
 

Jenna was wide awake now. Her heart machine-gunned beneath her ribs as she turned off the garage light, closed the door, and left the laundry room. She left the kitchen, intending to go back upstairs and check the computer room, but stopped in the hall when she heard a low, muffled voice, then laughter. She turned back and went to the door of Martha’s bedroom, leaned close to it, and listened.
 

“You gonna be good puppies from now on?” Then deep, throaty laughter.

It did not sound like David, but she knew it had to be. She turned the knob and pushed the door open, but did not step in yet.
 

Light from the hallway spilled into the bedroom and fell on David. He stood barefoot in his robe with his back to her, a beer in his right hand. The robe’s left sleeve hung empty from the shoulder, and the untied belt dangled at his sides.
 

“David?” she said, her voice hoarse. He turned toward her, and she gasped.

Once again, he stood with shoulders back and hips thrust forward. The robe was open in front and he wore nothing underneath. His face had been transformed— forehead creased with a deep frown, a grin peeled back over his teeth.
 

“What the fuck’re you doin’ here?” he said, his voice low and throaty. He put the beer on a dresser and walked with a lazy swagger as he came toward her.
 

Jenna stepped into the room and said loudly, “
David
!”
 

He stabbed his left elbow into her left shoulder and knocked her aside, saying, “Get outta my help me fucking Jenna way.”

Jenna stumbled sideways and fell to the floor in front of Martha’s vanity. She lay there motionless for a moment, digesting what she had just heard:
Get outta my help me fucking Jenna way.

David’s bare feet thumped up the stairs.

Jenna thought of Miles sleeping in the bright light of his room. She scrambled to her feet, left the room, and hurried up the stairs as the door of Miles’s bedroom slammed shut, darkening the hallway. She was afraid her heart was going to explode. She had never moved so fast before in her life.
 

Back up the stairs, down the hallway, quickly, quickly. The open door on the left—step inside, turn and close it.

In passing, Lily glimpses the digital clock on the bedstand, shaped like a flying saucer. It reads 1:19.

The boy, Miles Kellar, sits up in bed, eyes wide, mouth forming an 0. “Dad?”

The throat laughs as the right hand reaches out for the covers and rips them off the boy.

In Spider-Man pajamas, Miles screams, uses his feet to push himself back against the headboard, hands clutching the crushed pillow.

Climbing onto the bed and laughing as the right hand reaches out for the boy...

Jenna burst into Miles’s bedroom, shouting, “
David
!”
 

He was kneeling on the bed, with Miles pressed against the headboard, screaming. Ignoring her, David tore Miles’s pajama top open and the buttons scattered through the air, over the rug, cluttered on the hardwood floor.
 

Jenna went to the bed and grabbed David’s right arm. “David, stop it!” she shouted. “Leave him alone! Let him go!” She tried to pull his hand away from Miles, but his fist clutched Miles’s pajama top. Miles continued to scream, and the sound was filled with fear and confusion. Jenna pounded on David’s back with her fists as she shouted for him to let Miles go.
 

Miles kicked his legs and flailed his arms. His pajama top tore away from him with a sharp ripping sound, and a section of it dangled from David’s fist. As he struggled to get off the bed, Miles knocked over his bedstand, and the small lamp and flying-saucer clock went with it. David hooked his right arm around Miles’s torso and growled, “Fuckin’ puppy.” As he pulled Miles back onto the bed, he raised his left arm, bent at the elbow in the sling, out at his side for balance.
 

Jenna turned to the desk and took a fat hardcover dictionary from the desktop. Hefting the book in both hands, she raised it over her head. She threw herself forward as she brought the dictionary down hard on David’s bandaged left hand.
 

David’s scream was high and shrill with agony. He fell off the bed and landed on his back on the floor as his scream collapsed into a growl, then a groan. Then a sickened retch.
 

The overhead light went out with a
pop
and sparks rained down in the darkness. The temperature dropped suddenly, and Jenna knew something was in the room with them—the thing that had, a moment before, been inside David. Whatever doubts she’d had were wiped out with the certainty that something had commandeered David’s body.
 

Miles sobbed as Jenna found him in the dark and took him in her arms.

After the explosion of pain, Lily rises up until she is looking down on the Kellars—Jenna on the bed, still holding the book, Miles curled into a ball against the headboard, and David sprawled on the floor.

As the light goes out, Lily begins to sink, lower and lower, until she passes down through the floor into corrupt and filthy darkness and—

Lying facedown on the motel room carpet, Lily opened her eyes. Pain hammered behind her eyes and her stomach was upside-down, but a surge of adrenaline made her roll onto her side and get to her knees. She crawled to the bed, climbed up, and sat on it. “What time is it? How long was I out?”
 

“Longer than usual,” Claudia said. Her voice was shaky and she was pale. “It’s one twenty-four. For crying out loud, Lily, I can’t take that. I almost called an ambulance. The only reason I didn’t was that you kept talking.”
 

“I did?”

“Yeah. You kept saying, ‘Real time, real time.’“

Lily nodded once, the heels of her hands placed over her eyes. “That’s what it was. I realized it when I saw the clock in the boy’s bedroom. It was a real-time vision.”
 

“What do you mean?”

“I was seeing something as it happened. Something in the Kellar house. And I was seeing it through David Kellar’s eyes. Except... it wasn’t David Kellar.” Lily stretched out on the bed and pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes.
 

Claudia said, “What do you mean?”

“I was seeing through David Kellar’s eyes, but I was ... I was in something—no,
someone
else. There was someone else inside David Kellar. The fat man with the cowboy hat—I was inside
him
, and
he
was inside David Kellar. Does that make sense?”
 

“You’re saying David Kellar was ... possessed?”

“You could put it that way. I was feeling horrible,
sick
things. But it wasn’t David Kellar who was feeling them, it was the fat man with the cowboy hat.”
 

Eyes narrowing, Claudia said, “Who’s the fat man with the cowboy hat?”

“Someone who wants Miles Kellar very much.” She released a long sigh and said, “We’ve got to get the Kellars out of that house, especially the boy. And we don’t have much time.”
 

Jenna’s arms trembled in the dark as she held Miles, who clung to her as if for life. But he had stopped crying— he seemed to be listening for something. David retched on the floor beside the bed.
 

From downstairs, Martha shouted, “What’s wrong?”

Jenna shouted back, “We’re okay, Mom. I’ll be down in a minute.” Then, to Miles: “You’re okay, right, honey?”

He nodded and slowly loosened his hold on her, cautiously pulled away.

Jenna’s eyes adjusted to the darkness and she saw Miles look around the room. The mattress shifted as David leaned his right arm on it and pulled himself up.
 

Miles made a small, frightened sound in his throat and pulled Jenna with him as he backed away from his dad.

David’s voice was a dry croak. “I’m so sorry. I... it wasn’t... I didn’t—”

“It wasn’t you, David,” Jenna said. She turned to Miles. “That wasn’t your dad, honey. There is something in this house, some kind of ... presence. And it was inside your dad. Do you understand? It
made
him do that.” To David: “It wasn’t
you
, David. When it came out of you, the light blew out and the temperature dropped in the room, just like it did in the living room with Ada and with Dwayne Shattuck.”
 

“The fat man,” Miles said.

Jenna nodded. “Yes, the fat man. Honey, I’m so sorry I didn’t listen to you. I’ve seen the fat man, too.”

Miles’s eyes widened for a moment, but he said nothing.

David slowly got to his feet and closed his robe. Jenna could tell by his posture, straight but weary, that he was himself again. “Did you hear me, David? Do you understand what I’m saying? That wasn’t
you
.”
 

David’s head drooped as he nodded. “Yes. You’re right, Miles, it was the fat man. He wears a cowboy hat, right?”

“Is
that
what’s on his head?” Miles said. “I couldn’t tell what it was in the dark.”
 

Jenna pulled Miles to her and embraced him again. “You haven’t been dreaming. I don’t know exactly what he is, but he’s real. I’m so sorry we didn’t believe you when you told us it wasn’t just a nightmare.”
 

“That’s okay,” Miles said. “I guess if somebody told me a fat man was coming up through the bedroom floor, I probably wouldn’t believe it, either.”
 

Jenna kissed his forehead, stood, and faced David. “What are we going to do?”

“We’re going to turn on every damned light in this house.” He looked down at Miles and said, “Hey, Tiger, how would you like to stay up all night and watch TV?”
 

They went downstairs to the living room and turned on lights along the way.

David got the fire going again as Miles opened his sleeping bag on the floor in front of the television. He curled up in the bag to watch an old Tarzan movie. Martha sat on the couch and sipped a cup of tea.
 

Jenna and David sat together in the breakfast nook, where, for about fifteen minutes, David sobbed as she held him.

“Maybe the Binghams can help us,” Jenna said once he had calmed down.

David slowly turned his head from side to side. “Maybe they can, but... nobody will ever be able to erase what happened tonight. Jenna, it was ... it was like having a nightmare while I was half awake. The things that went through my mind ... the horrible, sick thoughts and feelings—”
 

“They weren’t
your
thoughts and feelings. You weren’t in control, David. But you had enough presence of mind to ask me for help.”
 

He turned to her with red-rimmed eyes. “You heard me?”

“Yes. It came through, I heard you.”

He nodded slowly as he turned away. He told her about his experiences in the house—things that he’d thought, until then, were nothing more than dreams. “These things in my head, these images,” he said, “I don’t know where they came from. They’re ... sick.”
 

“That’s what Dwayne said—whatever is in this house, it’s sick.”

“What makes you think these people can help? What’s their name again?”

“The Binghams.” She got up, went around the table, and sat down in Martha’s spot. She found the copy of the
Inquisitor
with the article about the Binghams in it. She opened the paper to the article and slid it across the table to David. “The
Inquisitor
covers most of their investigations, according to Mom. She’s been reading about them for years. She’s read some of their books, too.”