The Devil's Dream: Book One (30 page)

The little girl,
Marley, opened the door and closed it behind her. She didn't call out
to anyone because she knew Dad and her grandparents weren't home yet.
She was alone, and Matthew understood what that meant to her. For
just a few minutes she would have freedom. All day long she was
around people in school, told to go here and there and listened
because that was the type of girl Marley was. At home, her parents
loved her probably, but she wasn't in control there either. Here, for
just a little while—an hour or so—no one would be able to tell
her what to do, where to go, or how to act. She could do anything she
wanted and that was liberating no matter the age.

Matthew sat in the
chair and listened as she made her way to the kitchen. He heard her
open the refrigerator and pull something out of it. He leaned his
head on the high back of the chair and closed his eyes, listening to
her footsteps. Hilman had done this at one time. He had come in alone
while his mother and Matthew were busy doing whatever it was that
kept the lights on, and Hilman had been alone to make sandwiches or
play his video games. Matthew would never have those days again, but
he would have different ones, and this little girl was going to be a
big part of that. Marley would help because her mother had decided
that's what she wanted from Marley when she brought Rally into this.
Now Rally and Hilman were dead and Marley was walking around in her
kitchen with no clue what life could be like.

Just no clue.

He sighed, trying to
keep his anger from overwhelming him. He didn't need to grab the girl
yet. He didn't
want
to grab the girl yet. Time was on his side here, and he would use it.

Matthew stood from the
chair and walked silently to the foyer and then up the stairs, his
footfalls not causing a single creak.

* * *

Marley lay in bed with
her eyes closed. She wanted to sleep but it was going to take a long
time. She always loved her grandparents' house, always enjoyed when
her parents allowed her to stay the night or visit. Her grandparents
were like her parents, but always nice. They never scolded, never
told her she couldn't do something. Their house was fun.

Except now.

Now her Dad slept on
the couch and she slept in the guest bedroom and Mom didn't sleep
here. Now their family was separated and they had moved to her
grandparents’ house to create that separation.

Separation.

The word wouldn't leave
her mind. No one had said divorce yet, but she knew what both words
meant. Divorce meant the end. Separation meant near the end. That's
where they were now, near the end.

"Mom has to
decide, honey, whether she wants to be with us or whether she wants
to be with her job," her father told her.

"Why can't she
have both?"

"What does it feel
like she's chosen to you?"

Marley looked down at
that question because she didn't want to say the answer out loud. It
would make her cry and she was sick of crying.

Separation.
Her dad said Mom had to choose. What would it mean if Mom
chose something other than them? Would it mean that Mom didn't love
her? Would it mean something was wrong with Marley? She didn't want
to ask her Dad these questions because it would only hurt him, maybe
even make him angrier at Mom. He would tell her no, that none of this
had anything to do with her, only her mother. Maybe that was partly
right, but it had to be partly wrong too, because Marley
was
involved with this. Her Mom had to choose between Marley
and her job, and that meant it was about her.

The thoughts went round
and round in her head, unceasing. They caused her to stop on the
playground at school and to daydream during class as well. She
couldn't ever fully get away from them, from that word
separation.
Because her Dad and Mom were near the end, and she couldn't see past
that. She couldn't see a life without all of them under the same
roof.

Marley's eyes flashed
open and the thoughts she believed would never leave her flew from
her mind like grains of sand in a hurricane.

The screams coming from
outside of her new room took up all the space in her head.

* * *

Marley jumped from her
bed and fled her room, following the screams.

They led her to her
grandparents' bedroom, where the door stood open and the light shone
down from the ceiling.

Her grandmother stood
next to the bed, her hands on her cheeks and her mouth twisted open
with shrieks pouring from it. Her grandfather was still in the bed,
seemingly not hearing his wife's terror.

His eyes were open
though, so he wasn't asleep.

His chest was bleeding
too, so he had to have been awake.

Grandpa,
wake up, your chest is bleeding.
The thought came to her
as naturally as a leaf falling during autumn. No rush, no fear,
simply a changing of the seasons.

Something shoved Marley
to the side, nearly slamming her into the dresser. Marley looked away
from her Grandpa to see her Dad at the door now, his mouth unhinged
and all the force he rushed in with having halted. She would have
stared at him as he stared at the bed for all of eternity, unable to
pull herself away from the shock on his face. Her father, always the
one with answers, always the one she went to with her problems, was
completely frozen.

She would have stared
forever, except for the ghost that stepped from the corner.

So white, so fast, but
why was he wearing clothes? Ghosts didn't need to wear clothes
because they weren't human any longer.

It moved to her
father—who still stared at his own Dad, holes leaking blood all
over the white sheets—and began punching. The ghost grabbed her
father's neck with one hand, and with the other, pummeled his face.
Five hits in, her father dropped to his knees, but the ghost didn't
let go. Instead, he bent down and kept his fist slamming down like a
piston in a tractor-trailer. Up and down, up and down, Dad's face
turning to a bloody mush. She couldn't see his nose anymore, not even
with the white light above showing everything with a horrible
clarity. The ghost kept going, holding her father up by the hair now,
and slamming his right fist into his face, which no longer whipped
back into place, but hung limply.

Finally, when Marley
could make out little to nothing on her dad’s face, the ghost
stopped, letting him drop to the floor. It didn't look over at her,
but back to the woman still screaming at the bed. Her face almost as
pale as the thing that had just dropped Marley's father to the
ground. The creature walked over with the same lightness of step and
in a movement that Marley could barely keep up with, brought a knife
to her Grandma's throat.

It didn't pull the
knife out, and didn't start punching her, but stood there watching as
Grandma's hands moved from her cheeks to her neck. The old woman
stopped screaming, and her eyes no longer held knowing terror, but a
lost bewilderment, like she had suddenly been splashed with ice cold
water. She stood for a few seconds, a single line of blood dripping
down from the knife wound, and then fell forward. She landed on the
bed, her feet hanging off and her head on her husband's stomach.

The ghost turned to
Marley, its eyes the only thing with any color on its whole body, a
pale blue.

"Marley, are you
ready to go?" The ghost asked.

* * *

Allison smelled the
salt first, somehow making its way deep inside the dark pool she lay
in, a searchlight coming way, way down to drag her up. Her eyes
fluttered and she took in the world using brief sips of light before
finally opening them fully and taking one large gulp. A hand was
under her nose, holding something in a paper sack which contained the
weird, salt smell that woke her. She followed the hand, her eyes
moving up the arm until she saw what was at the end. The unsmiling
face. The face that had been on the cover of Time Magazine twice,
once for his work and again for his crimes—looking so much
different then. So much more human than the thing standing before
her.

Allison tried to move
her arms. They trembled in weakness and didn't budge any which way.
She looked away from the man's face to see why. Tape, rolls and rolls
of tape apparently, wrapped her to the wooden chair that normally sat
on the porch. All of her. Her torso, her legs, her arms, her hands,
everything was silver.

Closing her eyes, she
breathed slowly. She would go under if she didn't. She would begin to
hyperventilate and then the blackness would flood across her again.

"Allison..."
Brand said. "Look at me. I need you to focus. There are people
here to see you. You've already paid for this so I want to make sure
you get it."

She heard his voice,
not for the first time, but it was right next to her now. The voice
of The Devil. The voice of the only enemy that mattered.

"What do you
want?" She asked, eyes still closed.

"If you would look
around, you would see."

Allison opened her
eyes, looking straight ahead at her husband and daughter. Both were
taped like her, except tape covered their mouths as well, wrapped
around the back of their head. Also, they weren't taped to wooden
chairs like her, they were strapped to wheelchairs. Allison searched
Marley's face and every part of her body she could see; Marley looked
unharmed. Her hair was disheveled and her eyes bright red and puffy,
but that was it. Next she went to Jerry, whose face resembled almost
nothing of the man that she kissed the past fifteen years. His nose
was twisted to the side, both of his eyes only large purple welts
that he couldn't see from. His lips were huge, split pieces of meat,
and thank God she couldn't see inside to look at the holes where his
teeth should be. His head slumped down against his chest, unmoving.

"I had to tune up
your husband some. Couldn't let him have any opportunity to hurt me,
ya know? His parents are dead, your in-laws, but I suppose you
purchased that too. I didn't need to touch Marley, if that matters."

Allison tried to
swallow, her dry mouth unable to gather enough saliva to make it
work.

"You know why I'm
here?" Brand asked.

She didn't look up at
him. Didn't take her eyes from her family.

"I need you to
answer me, dear. Do you know?"

"Because you're a
fucking psycho," Allison said.

"No. Well, maybe,
but that would be an underlying issue, not the exact reason I'm here.
I had never thought of touching you or your family, not even in the
peripheral until about a week or so ago. Do you remember what
happened a week ago, Allison?"

She saw, from the
corner of her eye, him walk away from her before entering her full
field of vision as he moved behind Marley's wheelchair. He put his
hands on the handles and leaned over her, so that his face was right
next to her daughter's.

"Get away from
her," Allison said.

"What happened a
week ago?"

"You killed your
ex-wife."

"Why did I do
that?"

"Because she
stabbed you in the stomach, Matthew." She met his eyes, and they
were bluer than any picture could ever capture. Blue like untouched
oceans. Blue like skies that angels floated in.

Don't
fall into those.

"Yup, she sure did
stab me. Want to see?" He stood up and lifted his shirt,
revealing red skin that was stitched together. "She almost
killed me too," he said, dropping his black t-shirt back down
into place. "Why would she do that, Allison? Why would she hurt
me after all these years?"

"Because you're a
fucking psycho."

Matthew moved from
behind Marley's chair to Jerry's. He pulled her husband by his hair,
lifting his head up. Jerry gave no sign he was alive beside the slow
up and down movement of his chest.

Marley tried to scream
through her tape, but it was a muffled, futile attempt. Brand didn't
even look over.

"Let him be,"
Allison said, trying to keep her voice from rising.

"Rally knew I was
a fucking psycho for a long time, Allison. That was why she left me.
She didn't kill me when she left me though, did she? She just left
and found someone who wasn't so much of a fucking psycho. However,
this time she stuck me with a knife, and I doubt you know this part,
she shoved it deeper when I gasped for help. Why did she do that,
Allison?"

"You're supposed
to be smart. We don't tell people we're protecting to kill the people
we want to catch."

"You're not
supposed to, but law enforcement also isn't supposed to shoot down
children in the street, and we both know that's happened before."
He let go of Jerry's head and it flopped back to his chest.

"I wired her up
and I planned on having her lead us to you. That's what we did, and
that's what she agreed to. That knife? Those stitches across your
stomach? That was all her work."

Matthew tilted his head
to the side and stared, his blue eyes searching through her in a way
that she couldn't understand. They both looked through her, and at
the same time, weren't there at all, gone somewhere into his own
head.

"She thought you
were crazy. She thought you were too fucking crazy to continue
living. Don't you see that?" She was pushing and she knew it.
She should have been begging, asking him to let her and her family
go, but for what purpose? No one Matthew Brand came across got away.
No one he touched lived again.

"She didn't want
you to live anymore, Matthew. Not me. I wouldn't have killed you. I
would have brought you in and set you before a judge. Your wife was
the one that wanted you dead."

His head was still
cocked as if he wasn't fully listening to her. In her mind, Allison
saw the room he had built for Rally, saw the jewelry and the
streaming videos of their love, and she imagined it crumbling.
Falling apart inside his head as he looked at Allison with that
tilted glance, unable to do anything to stop the room from crashing
down. Was the granite statue being hit by pieces of the moon as it
fell from the roof? Is that what he was witnessing?