Shadow of the Past (34 page)

Corwin’s black smoke began to seep out
of his eyes and mouth and the tendrils moved up, trying to block
Mark’s progress. Mark dodged from one side to the other, trying to
get around them. He could move, he realized. He wasn’t sure if it
was because he was awake this time or because Corwin was more
distracted, but this wasn’t the same as before.

“Mark, kick this thing’s
ass, okay?”

Mark darted forward, forcing himself
through the smoke, blinding and burning him for a moment until he
felt the familiar tug of gravity and rush of oxygen into lungs that
burned like they’d been filled with charcoal.

He sprung up, expecting gun-toting Jack
or a shadowy Corwin to pounce on him, but they weren’t there.
Neither was Christine or Steve or Detective Prescott.

“You think it’s that easy, don’t
you?”

The voice came from all around him, and
Mark spun in place trying to get a read on his surroundings. The
basement was darker than it was in reality, and when he turned to
face the furnace he stopped in his tracks.

In Corwin’s mind (or was it his?) it
wasn’t just a furnace. It was a mammoth atrocity of black coiled
metal stretching from floor to ceiling and extending impossibly far
back into the darkness, beyond what his eyes could see. The fuel
chamber door wasn’t a small window of bars and glass, but a
crisscrossed network of bars barely containing a roaring wall of
flame.

The pipes that ran along the ceiling
were twice as numerous as they were in reality, and Mark could hear
them straining at things moving inside them, trying to get out. The
fire surged, and the bars holding it back began to yield to their
power.

It wasn’t a furnace, it was a prison.
And whatever it held wanted out.

“You think you can just waltz back in
here and kick me out, is that it?”

The voice was behind him now, and Mark
turned to see Corwin’s smoke form issue forth from underneath the
stairs, the fire in his eyes roaring brighter than Mark had seen
before.

“
This is my mind,” Mark
said. “I’m not going to let you use me anymore.”

The smoke under Corwin’s eyes twisted
into a sneer as he began to make a slow circuit around Mark. “Oh,
like you have a choice. Like you’ve ever had a choice.”

“Of course I do.”

“You don’t even know what this is. I
know everything that’s been in your head these past few months and
what you think what I’ve shown you means, but you don’t know
anything.”

“I know enough,” Mark said, turning
with Corwin as he paced around him.

“Oh, yes. You think I’m Justin Corwin,
crazed killer of children and I think you’re Darren Cox, the
innocent boy that escaped Corwin’s rampage. I’ve come back somehow
to finish the job I started 50 years ago.”

“That’s what you’ve shown me, isn’t
it?”

“You’ve only seen what I’ve allowed you
to see. Let me show you the rest.”

He waved a hand and everything rippled
and dissolved into smoke. It reformed around them, taking the shape
of the final vision that Mark had of Darren, Corwin and Randal. Off
to the side of them, Mark watched as Randal raced from the cell
that Corwin had neglected to latch and the three of them struggled
just as Mark had seen in his dream.

Darren, tattered shirt barely hanging
on to his blood-streaked torso, picked up the blade as Randal and
Corwin wrestled. Corwin smashed Randal’s head into the ground,
knocking the boy unconscious and blindly reached for the blade.
When he couldn’t find it, he turned to see it clutched in Darren’s
hands, drawn back as if the kid were a major league
hitter.

Corwin’s eyes went wide as Darren swung
with all his might. The blade nicked a tiny bit of Corwin’s hair
before slashing through Randal’s neck, sending a spray of blood
across them. Randal flailed weakly, head tilted at an obscenely
impossible angle.

Darren dropped the blade on the ground
in front of him, eyes wide. There was no fear in the boy’s eyes,
just awe at the wondrous sight in front of him.

“I’m a believer,” Darren
said.

Corwin nodded, picking up the blade. He
dragged Randal’s body closer to the furnace and bent down to finish
the job Darren’s swing started. Corwin paused, looking over his
shoulder at Darren.

“I knew I wasn’t crazy. I knew there
was something in there. It’s why I have to do this. I just need
someone to understand and see it.”

Darren nodded and took a step forward,
and as he did there was a commotion above them like a clumsy,
drunken parade. Darren and Corwin looked at each other, and then
the door at the top of the stairs burst open. Blue clad legs raced
down the steps, and when they reached the landing they bent down,
and a young face topped with a policeman’s cap peered at
them.

“Down here!” the officer yelled, face
going white.

Corwin turned back to his work, taking
a fistful of Randal’s hair and pulling and twisting with all his
might. The officer raced down the steps, followed closely by three
more officers, all of them with their nightsticks drawn. Darren was
almost knocked over by the group of them, and they started swinging
as soon as Corwin was within arm’s reach.

Randal’s body fell to the ground,
ignored as the four of them pummeled Corwin with all their
might.

“Easy! Easy!” shouted a plain clothes
detective, running down the stairs. “I want him alive! Alive,
dammit!” The group grudgingly stopped, pulling the barely conscious
Corwin away from the furnace and his final victim.

“Mother of God,” the detective said,
coming to a stop at Darren’s side. He bent down and turned Darren
away from Randal’s nearly headless corpse. “It’s all over now, son.
We’ll have you home to your mum and dad quick as we
can.”

The Detective led Darren up the steps,
following the officers dragging Corwin up the steps. Darren turned
and looked back, staring deeply into the furnace fire until he was
completely up the stairs and out of sight.

“That wasn’t real,” Mark said. “You’re
lying.”

“Why would I? You read it yourself in
your little book. Only one survivor, Corwin kills himself in his
cell. It was all there.”

“Corwin kills . . . But you, you’re . .
.”

“Not him, Mark. I never was. See what
you get when you assume?”

The smoke melted away from his body,
revealing a young man, just barely 20, maybe a few years
older.

“Wh . . . who?”

“Here,” the man said. “Let me give you
a hint.”

He unbuttoned his shirt and held it
open for Mark to see the long scar, wide and dull with age, running
from hip to shoulder.

“No, that’s not possible,” Mark said.
“It was me. I was Darren Cox.”

“No, I just showed you all the things
that I remembered after I was taken, when I was made to watch what
happened and when I saw my Lord in the fire. When my life was given
purpose.”

“Why me? Why did you have to come after
me? I don’t have anything to do with this!”

“Because we needed you Mark. He needed
you. You were the first one to see Him. You were the one that
showed me the way. We had to wait for decades for his soul, your
soul, to be drawn back here, but now it has and you’re back where
you belong.

Justin.”

Mark squeezed his eyes shut, trying to
block it all out, but he could feel it rising to the surface. His
parents, the war, coming down to this basement, staring into the
furnace . . . it all came back, filling in all the blanks the
visions and the book had left behind.

His past life as Justin Corwin burned
into his memory.

He remembered how, after being in his
cell and away from the fire the memory of what he’d done coming to
him. He knew that he had to pay, before the lawyer his relatives
had hired got him sent to some mental institution for the rest of
his life, claiming the war made him do those horrible
things.

He had to pay, and with a bed sheet
wrapped around the cell bars at one end and his neck at the other
he made sure that he did.

“Why? Why would you bring me back here?
Why do you need me?” Mark said when his breath finally came
back.

“Because you ran away you coward! You
took the easy way out, and left me there on the edge of something
truly great, something divine! I had to wait for years, to pretend
that what I saw was horrible and in my imagination. My family moved
away, and I had to wait until I left home to come back here, and
even then He still wanted you. He needed you, and I knew that the
only way I could bring you back here was to sacrifice my flesh and
wait until the day you were brought back here. I stayed in this
house, protecting it, until you were old enough for me to use
you.”

Mark leaned against one of the basement
poles for support. He slid down in under the weight of his former
life and Darren’s trembling rage.

“But why? It wasn’t me . . . not
really.”

“Mark, Mark, Mark.” Darren bent down
close to him. “Don’t tell me you haven’t ever thought ‘What have I
done to deserve this? Why me, why me, why me?’ And don’t lie and
tell me you don’t, because I know you have. You’d sit in bed and
you’d wonder what you did, what happened that you ended up with
such a horrid, miserable life. Well, now you know. And do you
really think that the universe would just let something like that
go? That it wouldn’t bring you back here to face what you left
behind when you took the coward’s way out?”

“That’s not fair, it wasn’t me! I’m
just a kid!”

“So was I! I was just a kid but you
opened my eyes! You made me watch, and right there at the end, when
I had accepted it, when we were on the verge of bringing the thing
we worshipped into this world, you quit! You left me after seeing
those things, and now, so help me, we are going to finish what you
started!”

Mark shook his head. “Never. I don’t
care what I may have done, or what happened to you, you can’t make
me!”

“Oh yes I can, Mark. Where do you have
left to go? Who do you have out there to help you? No one! I walked
you around this town and picked them off, using their blood to make
our Lord strong again. Now we’re here again and all we have to do
is kill these three and He will come through and grant us power
beyond our wildest dreams. We will spread his fire across this
town, across the world, and nothing will be able to stop
us.”

“I’ll never let you hurt them, or cause
whatever hell on earth you think you can create.”

“Oh, come on now,” Darren said. The
room shifted again, showing the wear and neglect of 50 years time.
His body, as well as all the others, materialized where they were
out in the real world, frozen in place.

“What are you going to do Mark? Tell
them ‘Whoops, it turns out that I’m a reincarnated serial killer
and this whole thing is my fault.’” He motioned to Christine. “Are
you going to tell her that her brother was killed because she
showed pity to a killer?”

“It’s not--” he started, but Darren cut
him off again.

“Is that what you’re going
to tell the Detective here? ‘Sorry, sir. It turns out that I
did
kill all those
people, but it wasn’t really me, see? I was possessed by a ghost,
that’s all. No harm, no foul.’ Do you think he’d even hesitate
before sending you to jail? Or an asylum? Or the electric chair?
All those people are dead, because you did something so awful, so
evil, that it will always be with you no matter what you do. You
can’t control it and you can’t change it. All you can do is give in
to what I’m offering you.”

“No, you’re wrong. They’ll know that it
was you that did all those things, not me. They care about me,
and--”

“Bullshit!” Darren said, waving at the
three time-frozen hostages. “You’re just a case to the Detective,
something to be solved, accounted for and forgotten. Even before
she knew this was your fault, the girl was sneaking around on you.
She never loved you and she never will! Even your own so-called
best friend betrayed you! Why on Earth would they stand by you
now?”

Darren moved closer, placing a hand on
Mark’s shoulder. The rage was gone, and now he was wide-eyed and
pleading. “There’s only one way out of this, Mark. Accept me.
Continue what you started all those years ago, and I promise you
the rewards . . . oh Mark, we’ll have whatever our heart’s desire.
I’ve seen the kind of power He has at his disposal. Their lives,
their blood, will free Him, and this world will be
ours.”

Mark looked over at his body, frozen in
place with the blade that had killed so many held down at his side
with one hand, the gun in the other, pointed at Steve. He was
frozen in the act of pleading with Mark to fight, and Mark’s own
face twisted with strain and rage.

At Mark’s side was Jack, still pointing
his pistol at David and as full of rage as Mark was, Jack had one
thing in his eyes that Mark’s body didn’t: Joy.

Mark looked back at Darren.

“Go back to hell.”

The pleading innocence vanished as
Darren’s eyes burst with a roar of fire and anger, and the smoke
he’d hidden himself with rose like a tidal wave and dove towards
Mark. Mark leapt for his frozen body and almost made it there
before the wave of darkness crashed over him.