Ravenous Ghosts (24 page)

"
No. I could never--" A fresh bout of tears burned her throat and she fell silent, Newman filling the space in the air between them with his newly-adopted sermon-like tones.

"
You must. There is no 'yes' or 'no' here. It has been decided. You are no longer one of The Defenseless, not with the power, the
gift
Kyle has given you. You are on a new path, one with direction and it must be followed. The meek are taking back the earth. You are one of us now, Gina and you need never be afraid again."

"
But the others…They'll be caught for what they've done." She blinked away the tears and saw that Newman was smiling.

"
No they won't. You know how invisible we are in this world. The stink of anguish drips from our pores, driving people away until we become nothing more remarkable than an icy breeze on a summer's day. No one could ever see us. Kyle's gift uses that, cloaks us further. Take Alice for example. When nosy neighbors discovered her husband's body and the cops came, they immediately sent out a warrant for arrest. A search was conducted. Can you imagine how surprised they'd be if they'd learned she was there in that house watching them, even as they milled around? She was right there in front of them. Invisible, Gina. Embracing the gift makes you so."

"
I still don't understand how you know so much about them."

He raised a thin strip of notepaper before her face and she had to lean forward in the hazy light to make out what was written on it. The handwriting was not Kyle
's. It was a list and it started with her name.

"
Because they found me. Just as I found you."

* * *

"You were right," Newman told her, his black eyes glistening in the light drifting through the hall window. "I thought he'd have woken up by now."

Like criminals, they had climbed the trellis and come through Gina
's open window. From there they had crept across the hall and up to the door of her father's room, Newman wincing at the noxious stink that permeated the air in the upper level of the house.

Now they looked across the bed at one another, Gina
's hair soaked once again and dripping on the bare floorboards with a metronomic tapping, as she shivered and looked down at her father. His naked, hairy arm was flung over his face as if to ward off the meager light penetrating his window, leaving only his broad expanse of forehead visible, dark tufts of tousled hair rising like nailed snakes from his head. Seeing him looking so vulnerable, she felt the slightest twinge of love, the wake of a better memory too quick to catch before it vanished and she sighed.

"
Was it easy for you?"

Newman didn
't answer and it took her a moment to realize that he must have assumed the question was directed at her father because that's where she was looking when she said it. She looked up at him, saw him shrug.

"
I imagine it would only be easy for a monster."

They were speaking in loud whispers but still Stan Lewis showed no sign of stirring. Gina nodded somberly.
A monster like my father
, she thought as Newman handed her the brown cloth package he had taken from a box hidden beneath the rug floor of the shack. She took it, gasping at the unexpected weight and then drew it close so that it was no longer held out over her father's slumbering form. Slowly, she untied the cloth.

A gun. Though she wasn
't well versed in firearms, she knew enough to know that the long barreled Colt she held in her hands would vaporize whatever part of the anatomy it was shot at. The metallic gleam of the weapon held her gaze, even as Newman spoke.

"
To outsiders, it will be a tragedy. To us, it will be a victory. You'll be setting yourself free, Gina and as painful as what you have to do may be, it will be nothing compared to the torture you've borne until now. Do it, and be done with your misery."

The pity in his tone reached her and she looked away from the gun, and down to her father. Almost immediately they came again: the buried memories shifting in their graves, their cries muffled beneath tons of packed earth as they struggled to be heard, struggled for an audience, begging to remind her that there was a good man locked somewhere inside the ogre she knew as her father. But they were muted by the sheer, impossible weight of reality, of fresher memory, carried on a scarlet tide of fury to the forefront of her brain where stood the monster. She began to weep, for the loss of her innocence at the behest of a man who should by all rights have been guarding it. A man, whose photographs lined the halls and beamed at her from a shattered frame on her nightstand at his request. A man, who she could remember loving. The lingering threads of that emotion now snagged in her heart like barbed wire, sparking new rage with every breath she took. Her father, a man who invaded her while offering sweet promises on a savage wind of sickly breath, who tore down the walls of her happiness and locked her in a sepulcher of her own misery.

She pressed the gun to the exposed part of his forehead.

Newman
's looked away. "God bless you," he murmured.

Her hand was trembling, the gun pressed so hard now against her father
's head he must surely awaken. She bit her lip, cocked the hammer and stopped breathing as her father's arm slid ever so slowly away from his face, stopping when one eye peered in confusion at her over the crook of his elbow. Something was muttered. Her name. A fresh burst of panicked breath, from whom she could not tell. Time had stopped. Newman turned back, no doubt to see why the blast of the gun had not yet come. She could feel his eyes on her, like carapaces set in human sockets. A moan. Her father was moaning, realizing her intent, feeling the icy cold promise of the gun barrel pressed against his head. His hands came away, floating over his chest like driftwood, his eyes wide and frightened, the whites positively glowing in the light from the window. "Gina?"

She almost faltered then as she watched him lick his lips, briefly recognized the man he had once been because it had been that long since she had seen him scared.

"You can't stay trapped forever," Newman whispered softly and her father's eyes moved in his direction, his head not moving at all.

"
Gina? Who's with you? What--"

"
But you must be quick," Newman said and once again looked away.

In a voice brittle with tears, Gina said:
"He's my father."

She thought she saw Newman nod, but in the poor light it was hard to be sure.

"We'll be your new family, Gina. We'll never hurt you. I promise," he said.

All three were silent for a prolonged moment, save for Gina
's sniffling and the panting from the man in the bed. Her finger tightened on the trigger.

"
Gina, honey doll…" her father said and a sudden, vivid memory flashed behind her eyes at the sound of his voice…

She is overwhelmed by the agony, paralyzed by the fear as he towers over her, smothering her with the scent of sex and blood and sweat and whiskey. He is thrusting, but it is as if he is stabbing her with the most wicked of blades, scissoring her open from groin to sternum and finally she can scream. She begs him to stop, tells him how it hurts, so bad, and his response is to slap her across the face. She is quiet then, watching as he labors in the gloom, a crooked smile on his moist lips as he whispers:
"Ssssh, honey doll. Daddy loves you."

Gina pulled the trigger, the sudden explosion of light and noise enough to elicit a startled cry from her as the recoil sent her staggering back against the wall, Newman
's pale oval face imprinted on her retinas.

"
Good girl," he said breathlessly, the sound seeming to come from miles away.

She straightened, winded, and looked down at her father.

The position he'd been laying in had changed only slightly but his head had shifted to accommodate for the forced removal of everything above his cheekbones, liquidized in a spray of blood and gray matter that had spurted up the headboard and almost halfway up the wall behind it. Already it was starting to reverse its course, trickling back down from whence it came and Gina felt her stomach lurch.

"
Oh God!" She dropped to her knees and bent double, one hand clenched on her stomach, bile seeping into her mouth.

Newman came around the bed and dropped to his haunches behind her.
"Do you feel it?"

She spat sourness from her mouth, her ears throbbing painfully.
"What?"

"
I said do you feel it?"

"
Feel what?"

"
The power! Do you feel it flooding your veins? Do you feel the hope returning, the restoration of your dreams and wildest fantasies lighting up your insides?"

"
I feel sick," she said and pushed him away as she struggled to her feet, remembering to avoid the bed and the gore that now adorned it.

A moment spared for the world to stop spinning and she turned away from the remains of her father. Her insides were not alight and nothing flooded her veins except for stark horror and repulsion for herself and what she had just done.

Newman grinned. "My sister," he said and held his arms out to her, the smile quickly turning to one of uncertainty at the sound of the clicking of the hammer. "What are you doing?"

"
I could have lived with myself before this, as bad as things were. Now I can't and that makes you the only person I can blame other than myself. That's the nature of my unhappiness. Blame anyone but me."

Newman scoffed.
"What are talking about?"

"
You never told me how you knew about those people. What drove them to do the things they did."

His eyes glimmering in the blue light from the window, Newman splayed his hands out before him in a gesture of helplessness.
"Yes. I did. I told you--"

"
About a higher power. A force. I know," she interrupted. "Forget all that bullshit because from the moment you started in on that voodoo I knew there was something wrong with you."

"
What do you want me to say then, if you won't listen to the truth?"

"
I'm perfectly prepared to listen to the truth, but so far it hasn't been offered."

He made to step forward and she stiffened, the hand holding the gun whitening and Newman backed off, hands raised.

"So tell me," she continued, struggling to keep her voice even and calm.

"
Tell you what?"

"
Tell me how you knew about that woman. How you knew what her husband was doing to her before she killed him or--or how you knew about the kid and the bodies in the well. Tell me how you knew everything about people you never met."

When he spoke, all trace of cordiality had drained from his voice. Now he sounded tired, weary of her histrionics.
"I told you. They came to me."

Gina forced a laugh.
"Bullshit. You want to know what I think?"

"
Absolutely."

"
I think
you
went to
them
. I think you watched them until the time was right for you to show up outside
their
bedroom windows. I think you fed on their misery, told them their dead had sent you as an emissary to drag them from the mire of self-pity and helplessness."

Newman chuckled dryly.
"Right."

"
And then…after you watched them murder their tormentors, you killed
them
and made it look as if they'd fled the scene of the crime."

"
That's quite a story. May I have the gun now?"

"
You're kidding right?" Gina grinned, but her whole body tensed. "What would my headline have been, huh? 'Suicidal Teen Murders Father And Self'? Is that how this was supposed to play out?"

"
Gina, give me the gun. I don't want to hurt you."

She couldn
't tell from his voice if that was meant as a simple statement or a threat. She swallowed, perspiration trickling down her cheeks. 

"
Why are you doing this?" she asked him and backed up a step. He accordingly, took a step forward.

"
Doing what?" he said. "Saving you from yourself?"

He stabbed an index finger at the body on the bed.
"Saving you from this fucking pervert? You really don't get it do you? You really aren't tuned to the right frequency at all." He took another step forward. Gina watched the gun trembling in her hands, sweat making the trigger slick beneath her fingertip.

"
Don't."

"
Put the gun down and stop being ridiculous. You know why I came here."

"
No. I don't."

"
Gina, I'm warning you. You have no idea of the forces surrounding us." Another step forward.