Sinister Entity (39 page)

A section of the floor gave way, and her leg fell through up to her ankle. She pitched forward, held by the sharp, smoking planks like a bear trap.
 

She glanced up to see the fire dance across the ceiling. It looked and sounded as if the entire hallway was about to collapse.
 

Jessica tugged at her leg to free her foot.
 

“No, no, no, not like this!”

A heavy, flaming two-by-four came crashing down, landing inches from her face. She smelled the sharp tang of burning hair and swatted the blue flame from her head.
 

The heat was overwhelming. Sweat stung her eyes. The more she moved her leg, the more the wood pinched shut on her ankle. It was like quicksand.

A tingling sensation prickled along her lower back.
 

Her stomach clenched and her body froze.
 

She wasn’t alone.
 

Harlan’s EB was still here. She felt it watching her, waiting for the flames to engulf her.
 

Crying out with exertion, she grabbed her leg and pulled, but it accomplished nothing. The fire roared throughout the hallway. It was as if it, too, was alive.
 

Looking up, she saw what was left of the ceiling was close to total collapse. When it did, it would crush as well as set fire to her.
 

Her strength sapped, she lay flat on the hot floor. The hair on the back of her neck vibrated as the EB came closer, savoring its victory.
 

I’m sorry, Selena,
she thought. She shut her eyes against the roiling smoke. Then,
I love you, Daddy. I’ll be with you, finally, soon.

Jessica’s exposed skin started to blister. It didn’t matter. She knew this wasn’t the end. There was so much more to see.
 

“Squeakpip! Get up!”

The sound of her father’s voice startled her. Her eyes flew open and she looked around for the source.
 

Turning around, hoping to see her father, she instead came face to face with Christopher Harlan, deceased and stronger than ever.
 

The EB was a solid black mass, with a vague hint of shoulder and a head. A pair of violet eyes glared at her from within its stygian depths.
 

A smoky appendage stretched toward her. It touched her forehead and pushed down, trying to pin her to the floor. Its touch was colder than the depths of the ocean.
 

Sinister laughter seeped into her skull.
 

“So pretty. I could have fucked you, too,”
it hissed.
 

No.
 

She was strangely okay with burning to death.
 

But not in the company of Harlan’s EB.
 

Not knowing it would remain free to torture poor Selena and her family.
 

Screw this!
 

She wasn’t going to let Harlan win. Her father told her to get up, and that’s what she would do.
 

But first, she needed to be a little more forward with this EB from hell.
 

Staring into its hateful eyes, she shouted, “I thought I told you to go away. Christopher Harlan, your evil soul isn’t welcome here anymore!”

It shrieked at her while its edges grew soft, more translucent.
 

“Nice try, asshole,” she spat. “I’ll say it one more time. Christopher Harlan, go…to…hell!”

The black shape shattered into thousands of fragments, the force fanning the flames.
 

The pair of violet eyes hovered in the air for a moment, then faded to pink, then white, and closed in on themselves.
 

Now he was gone.
 

She pushed her leg forward, hoping to change the position of her foot, and felt the wood crack as she yanked her foot free. With the EB gone, the dying house hadn’t the strength to hold her. After scrambling to her feet, she ran down the stairs, feeling the fire rage at her back. Her shoulder slammed into the kitchen doorway but she barely registered the pain.
 

Yanking the garage door open, she sucked in a huge lungful of clear, night air. The pain and pleasure almost made her pass out.
 

A few lights had come on in the surrounding houses.
 

She stumbled to her Jeep. Her fingers trembled as she fumbled to get the key in the ignition. She looked out the window to see that most of the smoke had remained contained, thanks to Christopher Harlan’s shutting every window tight before he offed himself. If she was lucky, the neighbors wouldn’t have time to register the fire or the strange Jeep with the frantic girl inside before she sped off.
 

She started the Jeep and backed out of the driveway. Her skin felt as if it were electrified and pulsing, thanks to the innumerable fly bites. On the way back to the Leighs’ house, she tried to call 911 and report the fire, but dropped the phone onto the floor.
 

Everything after that was black.
 

Chapter Fifty-Two

“Knock, knock.”

Jessica had been dozing, the television turned down low so it was just background noise. She turned to face the door.
 

Eddie walked in holding a bouquet of flowers and a full plastic bag.
 

“How you feeling?” he asked as he grabbed the chair near her bed.
 

“Like shit, but it’s an improvement from total shit.”

Eddie looked at her standard issue hospital gown and chuckled.
 

“What?” she said.
 

“They couldn’t find a Metallica gown for you?”

“Don’t make me laugh. It hurts, too much.”

“Okay, how about this? You hungry?”

“Starving.”

He pulled her tray over and took out two Styrofoam boxes. One had Chinese food, the other a cheeseburger and fries.
 

“I wasn’t sure which you’d be in the mood for,” he said, putting the flowers on the windowsill.
 

“I think both,” she said.
 

She had collapsed when she walked into Rita and Greg’s house, part of an adverse reaction to what the doctor said was the most insect bites he had ever seen. She was also dehydrated and exhausted, with what looked like a bad sunburn on her arms, so she was given a two-night stay at Seabrook General. Her memory after leaving Christopher Harlan’s house was sketchy at best. Eddie had promised to fill her in on all the details when she was up to it. All that mattered was that Selena and her family were safe and would never again be harassed by Harlan’s EB.
 

Her face and arms looked as if she had a bad case of the chicken pox, with red, raised bumps everywhere. The doctor said they would go away after a few days, though some would leave small, lasting scars.
 

Jessica piled pork fried rice onto her burger. Eddie looked on with mild revulsion.
 

“Really?” he said.
 

“Really,” she answered, and took a huge bite.
 

“Greg, Rita, Selena and Ricky came by earlier but they said you were out cold. They left this for you.” He pulled a three-foot-tall teddy bear from the side of her table. It held a heart to its chest.
 

“That was real sweet of them.”

“Yeah, well, they’re real sweet on you. I think Greg might petition the Pope to make you a saint.”

She ate a handful of fries. “It’s funny how things change, isn’t it? Greg hated me when we got here.”

Eddie nodded. “He had every right to be skeptical. That is, until it was impossible to deny the truth.”

“Has the doppel…double walker come back? Is Selena sleeping okay?”

“I think her double walker accomplished what it came for. As for her sleeping, that’ll take some time before she feels comfortable again. Can’t say that I blame her.”

When she had eaten every morsel of food, she lay heavily against her pillows. “Did you find out any more about Christopher Harlan?”

“The news reported a little about him when they covered the fire. By the way, they have no leads on who or what started the fire. One neighbor thought they saw a car drive down the street around the time it started, but didn’t get the make or model. I think you’re in the clear.”

“Was anyone hurt? I don’t think I could live with myself if that happened. I had to do something and at the time, I didn’t think of consequences.”

Eddie touched her hand reassuringly. “They put the fire out pretty quickly. No one, other than you, was hurt.”

Jessica sighed. “Thank God. So, tell me about Harlan.”

“He was bad, Jess, as bad as we thought. The entire neighborhood is shocked that he lived in their midst for so long without so much as an inkling of the monster that he was. He was a pedophile, through and through. The rescue team found boxes of child porn, spy cam pictures, you name it. He had a room full of the stuff. Harlan was an uber-predator who escaped the system. But in the end, he tried to make things right, though it didn’t work out that way.”

“You mean by killing himself?”

“Yep. I read the note that you had in your pocket. It fell out when I went to hang up your jeans. Did you know it was his suicide note?”

“To tell you the truth, I barely remember taking it. I was busy looking for something with his name on it. I must have known at the time. Why else would I have saved it?”

“Sometimes, our actions aren’t necessarily our own.”

“You get that from a fortune cookie when you bought me lunch?”

“Ha-ha. Anyway, Harlan’s obsession with Selena went on for a year. He followed her from school, took pictures of her when she was in stores or the park with her friends. It got so bad that he began to impersonate her, to dress like her, to walk like her, to try to
be
her. As sick as it sounds, he liked to masturbate
as
her. And when that wasn’t enough, he knew that he had to take her.
 

“Now, here’s where it gets even stranger. About two months ago, in the middle of his planning to abduct Selena, he goes to his doctor because he feels a pain in his…”

Eddie paused, uncertain.
 

“A pain in his what?” Jessica prodded. “I’m a big girl, I can take it.”

He exhaled. “Okay, well, something was wrong with his dick.”

He flushed red, but Jessica needed to know the rest. “Can’t say that I feel sorry for him,” she said.

“It turns out, he had cancer. Within a week, that whole area would have been as useful as a ball of silly putty. So now his plan to kidnap and rape Selena is ruined. He can’t have her the way he craves. His own body rebelled against him, and it throws him into a rage. The last thing he did before putting the gun in his mouth was watch Selena walking home from school one last time. Feeling like the impotent bastard he’d become, he scribbled a quick suicide note and pulled the trigger.”

“You got all that from the note?” Jessica asked.
 

“Some of it. The rest I got from his spirit as you started to use his name against him. I had been trying to connect with him, and made solid contact just as you found his driver’s license.” His shoulders shook. “Worst contact I’ve ever made. I may need therapy.”
 

Deep down, he knew that wasn’t far from the truth. He still couldn’t get over the way his physical body reacted when he was tethered to Harlan’s energy. The carnal fantasies about Selena should have turned his stomach, which they did. But there was that part of him that responded all too eagerly to the images. He knew it was all Harlan, but the violation to his own body was a tough one to handle.
 

They sat in silence, overcome by the enormity of events that had led to this.
 

Jessica finally said, “Holy crap.”

“Yeah, holy crap is right. Christopher Harlan couldn’t have Selena in life, but he was damn sure he was going to make good on his desire in death.”

Jessica watched the IV drip, felt the weight of his words add to the contemplation of her future, something she had been doing a lot now that she had time to think in the hospital.
 

She found his hand and said, “I can’t thank you enough. I couldn’t have done this without you.”

“We were a pretty good team. Maybe one day I can help you with your own abilities, especially if you plan to do more of this. I don’t think you need to create hurricanes wherever you go. You are truly your own worst enemy. But on the flip side, you have a pretty remarkable gift. I’d like to try to figure out what makes you tick, help make your life a little easier.”

Jessica smiled. “I’d like that, too.”

She squeezed his arm and exclaimed, “Oh my God, I hope you still have a job. I’d hate to see you lose it over coming here with me to get our asses kicked for a week.”