Ghost Town (20 page)

You're afraid.

It was his father's voice.

Mitch wanted to deny it, but he didn't bother. Daddy always knew when he was lying.

Fear makes you weak. And no son of mine is going to be a weakling.

A memory rose from the depths of his mind. He was nine and playing in his first Little League baseball game. His team was the Pirates, and they were playing the Braves. His daddy was sitting in the stands with the other parents. His mom had stayed home. Daddy didn't like it when she went out in public, said he wasn't going to have other men staring at her like a whore, even if she was one. Mitch wasn't sure what a whore was, but he knew it wasn't good by the way his mom cringed whenever Daddy called her that.

Not much happened in the first inning. Mitch played left field, and no one hit the ball toward him, and he didn't get to bat. The Braves didn't score, and neither did the Pirates. The second inning came, and the Braves were up. The first batter grounded out, and
the second hit a pop-up foul that the catcher nabbed, making another out. The third batter stepped up to the plate, swung at the first pitch, and missed. He connected with the second, a good, solid hit, and his ball sailed straight out into left field, right toward Mitch. Adrenaline surged through his body. He didn't have to run far to get under the ball, and when he was in position, he raised his glove, squinted his eyes against the bright sunlight, and waited for the ball to fall into his hand.

It should have been easy. The ball floated down toward him as gently as a soap bubble, seeming to move so slowly that he thought he could reach out with his bare hand and simply pluck it out of the air. But as the ball came closer, his excitement gave way to a sick, fluttery feeling in his stomach. He remembered playing catch with his daddy in the backyard one time the summer before. It had been one of the few times he could recall Daddy spending time with him—he was usually too busy watching TV or building something in his basement woodshop and downing copious amounts of beer in the process. So it had been a special afternoon for Mitch. They had thrown the ball back and forth a few times to warm up, nothing too hard, and then Daddy had decided to start making Mitch work. He's thrown fast balls, curve balls, sliders . . . Daddy had played on the high-school baseball team, and he was still pretty good. Mitch hadn't caught every throw, but he'd caught most of them, and while his daddy hadn't praised him, he hadn't criticized, and to Mitch, that was just as good.

Then Daddy had decided to throw some high balls. Mitch had caught the first two easily enough, and without thinking, he'd grinned at his daddy and said something he'd heard older boys say when they played ball around the neighborhood.

“Is that all you got?”

It was nothing, just a bit of playful banter, but Daddy's expression had darkened.

“You think you're so smart, you little fucker? Try and catch this!”

Mitch had been afraid his daddy would fire off a fast ball straight at him, but instead he'd thrown the ball almost straight up, and it had flown much higher than any of the others, higher than Mitch thought possible. It had seemed to dwindle to a black speck against the blue sky, and Mitch had wondered if he would ever be big enough and strong enough to hurl a ball so high.

“Catch it, or I'll bust your ass.” Daddy had said this softly, but Mitch had no trouble hearing it or believing it. Then Daddy had stepped back to give Mitch room to go after the ball.

He had stood frozen for a moment—but only a moment—before getting his ass in gear. He'd run forward, keeping his eyes on the ball, glove held at the ready. The ball, already descending, had seemed to come down so much faster than it had gone up, and Mitch had imagined that instead of a baseball, he was trying to catch a meteor that was rocketing to earth, trailing a tail of burning fire behind.

He had got into position, eyes still on the ball, glove up and ready, and his father's words had whispered through his mind.
Catch it, or I'll bust your ass.
Mitch knew that Daddy had been talking about more than a spanking—much more.

The ball had hurtled toward him, and at the last instant, he'd squeezed his eyes shut and gritted his teeth.

The ball had slammed into the left side of his head and mashed his ear before bouncing off and landing in the grass. Bright light had exploded behind his eyes, and pain had roared through his nerves like wildfire. The impact had caused his knees to buckle, and he'd fallen onto his side, sobbing. Tentatively, he had reached up to touch his ear and found it swollen and hot. He had feared he would feel blood gushing from his ear canal, but the only moisture he'd felt was a bit of sweat.

“That was pathetic.
You're
pathetic.”

Mitch had looked up to see his father silhouetted against the sky like some dark giant.

The promised ass-beating had begun soon after that.

So, months later, when Mitch stood in left field, watching a ball come down toward him, he froze. This ball didn't hit him, but he almost wished it had. It fell to the ground less than two feet away from him, bounced a couple of times, then rolled to a stop.

A collective moan of disappointment came from the crowd. Mitch's coach shouted for him to pick up the ball and throw it to second, but Mitch didn't move. All he could do was focus on his father, who was sitting in the stands right behind the dugout, glaring at him from behind the chain-link backstop.

The ass-beating he got later that night was worse than any he had ever experienced at his father's hands before. The next morning, he was in the emergency room at the hospital, his mother trying to explain to the doctor how her son had come by three cracked ribs, a dislocated shoulder, and two broken fingers. “Skateboarding accident” was the excuse the doctor had finally accepted. At least, that's what he had written down on the chart. Whether he believed it was a different matter.

And now there he was, thinking of the Dark Lady, hearing his father's voice again.
You're afraid of her, just like you were afraid of that ball. She's just a woman.

“No, she's not,” Mitch mumbled. “I don't think she's
just
anything.”

Whatever she is, you're her bitch, and it makes me sick!

“I am not.” He sounded like a pouty little boy, and he hated it.

She snaps her fingers, and you come running to her like a dog. Not a real dog, either. One of those tiny yipping things that are always trembling and squirting pee on the floor when they get excited.

“Stop it.”

You killed a man for her, for Christ's sake!

“I . . . was being strong.”

Bullshit! You kill someone because they wronged you somehow and
they got it coming, that's being strong. Killing someone because someone else wants you to, that's being a puppet. I didn't raise you to be anyone's toy, now, did I, Mitch?

“No, sir.”

You drove all the way to this pesthole of a town so you could get that little bitch alone and teach her a few well-deserved lessons. You didn't come here to be the servant for . . . for whatever the hell she is. Did you?

“No.”

All right, then. So what the hell are you going to do about it?

Before he could answer, a dark smudge appeared in the air on the passenger seat next to him. The Dark Lady had returned.

He gripped the steering wheel tightly and kept his gaze focused forward. The temperature inside the car dropped swiftly, causing tiny veins of frost to appear on the inside windows.

“Where were you?” He was afraid to talk to her, let alone demand to know what she had been up to during her absence, but Daddy wanted him to be strong, to show this bitch who was really in charge around here.

He kept his gaze trained on the Dumpster behind the restaurant. An employee came out the back door, bulging white plastic garbage bags dangling from his hands by thin red loops. The employee—Hispanic from the look of him—didn't so much as glance at Mitch's car as he tossed the trash into the Dumpster and headed back inside the restaurant.

The Dark Lady said nothing the entire time the man was outside, but Mitch knew she had heard his question. He could feel anger radiating off her in waves, but she didn't speak until they were alone again.

“I returned to the museum to leave a message.”

What the hell was she talking about? The two of them had already left a message, hadn't they? And a goddamned big one, too—a pair of dead bodies sprawled on the museum floor.

“You got what you wanted. Now it's my turn. I want Amber, and you promised you'd help me get her. I'm tired of waiting.”

No matter how much vehemence he put into his voice, he knew she wouldn't take him seriously if he continued looking out the windshield. So he forced himself to turn toward her, but try as he might, he couldn't meet her gaze full on. The best he could do was look past her and out the passenger-side window.

The cold within the Impala intensified, and frost spread across the interior of all the windows, the white crystals making soft crackling sounds as they appeared. The Dark Lady didn't respond to his words right away, and he had the terrible feeling that challenging her wasn't the smartest thing he had ever done.

“You keep hearing your father's voice telling you that you're weak. Would you like to know what being weak really feels like?”

Before Mitch could answer—and he most assuredly would have answered no—fingers of ice gripped his head and forced him to look into the obsidian eyes and marble face of the Dark Lady. He started to scream, but as he opened his mouth, she lunged forward and fastened her lips to his. He screamed anyway, but their lips were stuck tightly together, almost as if their flesh had merged, and his scream was muffled. He tried to pull away, but her grip was like iron, and she held him fast. Her tongue slithered forward, a thick length of meat as soft and sinuous as a snake. It filled his mouth, touched the back of his throat gently, almost hesitantly, as if exploring. And then—after pausing the merest instant—it began sliding down. Panic surged through him as the tongue seemed to swell within his throat, blocking his airway. He placed his hands against the Dark Lady's chest and tried to push her away, but he found her body as hard and immovable as a stone wall. He tried clawing at her cheeks and gouging her eyes, but his nails found no purchase anywhere on her flesh. Lungs burning for air, he grabbed double handfuls of her long black hair and tried to yank her head away from him. But no matter how hard he pulled, he couldn't budge her.

Down, down, down the tongue wriggled—how long could the goddamned thing possibly be?—and still farther down it went. His throat spasmed as he gagged around the meat-snake, but although his body desperately tried to expel the alien invader, the tongue continued its slow downward slide into the depths of his body.

By the time the tongue reached his stomach, his vision had gone gray, he tingled all over, and his lungs felt like empty, shriveled sacks inside him. He stared into the Dark Lady's glossy black eyes, looking for any hint of pity or mercy, but all he saw was endless, absolute darkness. And then he knew nothing else.

How long he dwelled within that darkness, he couldn't have said, but after a while, the black gave way to white, and he realized he was looking at the ice-covered interior of his car once again. The Dark Lady sat in the passenger seat, hands folded almost demurely in her lap, her mouth closed. He drew in a deep, gasping breath and then began to sob.

“Your father's voice is a lie. Just a trick of your mind. But I am real, and if you defy me again, I'll send you back into the dark and leave you there forever. Do you understand?”

Mitch couldn't bring himself to speak. He wiped his eyes and nodded once.

“Good. Now, drive back to the hotel. We have work to do there.”

Tears still trickling down his cheeks, Mitch reached out with trembling fingers and turned the key in the ignition. He turned the heater on high, switched it to defrost, put the car in gear, and slowly pulled away from the curb. After a few moments, the windshield was clear, and the interior of the Impala was warm and toasty. But Mitch continued to tremble.

“I think I
can safely say that if it wasn't for you, I never would've gone into journalism as a career field, and I certainly wouldn't have made a specialty out of writing about the paranormal.”

Carrington inclined his head in a brief nod. “That's kind of you to say, Trevor.”

Trevor was impressed despite himself. Carrington was working on his fourth Scotch, and so far, he showed no signs of being drunk. He had ordered a Samuel Adams and had barely touched it, while Connie had gotten a shot of whiskey, downed it immediately, and then ordered another. Trevor sat on Carrington's left, Connie on his right. Given how beautiful Connie was, Trevor had expected Carrington's attention to be almost solely focused on her—there were plenty of other men in the bar, and more than a few women, who couldn't take their eyes off her—but he paid no special attention to her. He sat hunched over the bar, holding on to his Scotch and staring straight ahead, as if deep in thought. He would answer whenever either of them spoke to him, but Trevor had the sense that he only half heard them. Trevor had tried flattery in the hope that it would draw Carrington out, but the man had barely acknowledged his words. Trevor was a bit surprised to find himself hurt by Carrington's lackluster reaction. Despite the situation, what Trevor had told him was true. Carrington had been something of a hero to him once upon a time, and it wasn't an easy thing to admit to your hero how much he had influenced you, only to have him barely react to your words.

“You seem subdued, Arthur,” Connie said. “Is something bothering you?”