The Messenger (2011 reformat) (33 page)

"How
could he know about my husband?"

"Research,
Jane. That's what these guys do to make their living. They make people believe
that they know things they couldn't possibly know. Then you'll think he's
clairvoyant or psychic or whatever."

"Okay,
but why? Why would this man, a perfect stranger to me, and someone I could do
nothing for, go to all that trouble?"

Steve paused.
"Well...I don't know. Did he ask you for anything? Money? Information
about the murders? Did he ask to interview you for a book or show?"

"No,
nothing like that," she said. "But he did ask me for access to the post
office."

Steve gave her
a puzzled look. "What the hell for?"

"I'm not
sure. He said he wanted to look for something, something about the bell."

Steve winced
at the wheel. "Look, I dealt with his guy Dhevic twenty years ago. He was
a flake then, and he's a flake now. Just steer clear of him. Don't listen to
him. Next time you see him, call me immediately."

Before she
could say more, Steve was slowing down for a turn. Had an hour passed since
they'd been driving? The sun was going down.

"Here we
are," he said. "Inside, the cons call this place the Concrete Ramada."

They were
driving down a service road lined with high fences that were fronted and topped
by heaping coils of razor wire. In the security lights, the wire was pretty; it
shimmered like Christmas tinsel. Beyond, she could see the multistoried
detention center, a hulk of beige cement and slit-like windows. Steve showed
his badge at a security gate, then pulled in. When he parked in the visitor's
lot, he squeezed her hand and said, "Let's go."

Inside, Steve
processed them both, checked in his gun, and got floor passes for them both. An
elevator took them to the top floor, but as they were going up each preceding
level, Jane could hear a roar like a football game but then she realized it was
merely the vocal chaos of the general population. It was an ugly sound. She was
relieved by the silence when the door slid open on the top floor.

A stark sign
told them:
Cell-BLOCK 6D-PSYCH EVAL & DETENTION.

Eventually a
stocky detention officer took them down a clean, antiseptic-scented hallway.
White metal doors lined the hall, and when he stopped at one, a buzzer blared and
someone snapped inside the door.

"Just so
you know, this one's probably never even going to be arraigned," the
officer told them.

"Why?"
Steve asked.

"She
psychotic."

"CDS
induced?"

"Not like
I've ever seen. She's delirious, hallucinatory, and doing a lot of word salad,
but her blood screen was negative for drugs. She's also very violent, so be
careful. We got her on a hundred mg's of Loxapine, enough to mellow out Attila
the Hun, and she's still trying to bite her way out of the straitjacket."

"I'll be
careful," Jane said.

"I'm
going in with you," Steve told her.

"No. If
she's in a straitjacket, she can't hurt me. She knows me, she'll talk to me.
Just let me do this on my own. If there's a problem-"

"Hit the
buzzer on the wall," the detention officer said. "Stay near the buzzer."

Jane walked
into the cell. It was just like the movies: shiny white padding lined the walls
and floor. Sunlight came down from a single high window.

The door
slunked shut behind her.

II

The sight of
Sarah as a violent psychiatric patient was just like the movies too. She sat
huddled in one corner, white utility pants, barefoot. Her once-pretty blond
hair looked a wreck, and her arms were wrapped around herself in a canvas
straitjacket, whose shoulders she was chewing on. When Jane walked in, Sarah
snapped her gaze up and grinned.

She was
cross-eyed.

"Sarah,
for God's sake, what happened?" Jane said right out.

"Not for
God's sake."

"Then for
whose?"

"The
Messenger's sake."

The Messenger,
Jane thought. "You mean Aldezhor?"

Sarah's eyes
raged. "Don't ever say his name! Never! His name is a holy thing! We are
not worthy to speak it! It's a secret that must never pass our lips!"

"I'm
sorry, Sarah. I didn't know that."

"If you
speak his name again, I'll tear my way out of this thing and suck your brains
out of your ears!"

"I won't
speak it again, I promise." Jane's heart stepped up at each outburst; her
adrenaline surged. "But I'd like to ask you something, Sarah. You set off
a bomb at the police station today. You killed several people. Why?"

"Fodder,"
Sarah replied. "Meat for the grist of my lord's mill. But I've done my
part. We all have."

"You've
done your part for what?"

"For him.
For the Messenger, and the sending of his wondrous message. He walks the earth
through us. We are his messengers."

Jane stared at
the macabre figure that was once her employee and friend.

"He's
back," Sarah said. "We're bringing him back," and then her face turned
maroon as she struggled in the straitjacket. There was a creaking sound along
with several ugly cracks! and that's when Jane realized that Sarah was breaking
her own bones...

"Stop
it!" Jane yelled.

Sarah was
manipulating her fractured arms now, shucking herself out of the jacket. She
didn't react at all to the imponderable pain-all she did was grin, never taking
her eyes off of Jane.

Fear paralyzed
Jane. Her brain screamed at her to lunge for the alarm but she couldn't.
Sarah's insane glare held her in a dizzy rigor. When she gets out of that,
she's going to kill you, Jane realized, but still she couldn't move. Then Sarah
rose to her feet, shrugged out of the straitjacket. She stood bare-chested, her
breasts heaving, laved in sweat and blotched by scuffmarks. Her arms flopped at
her sides as if multi-jointed now, shards of bones sticking out of the skin,
blood running. Her hand flexed, then she squeezed her eyes shut and raised an
arm, tentacle-like, and-

"Stop
it!" Jane shouted.

With thumb and
index finger, Sarah broke off one of her front teeth and then-

"Stop!"

-used the
jagged edge to cut herself. On the flat of her abdomen, she calmly etched the
shape of a bell and a star-shaped striker.

"Behold
the Messenger, Jane," croaked the voice that was anyone's but hers.
"The arrival of the Messenger is at hand."

Next, Sarah
slowly inserted an index finger into her left eye socket, pushing, pushing,
until the thin bowl-shaped bone snapped. The finger burrowed into the brain.

Sarah grinned
one last time, then toppled over dead.

I

Steve tucked
her into bed, only the bedside lamp on. He held Jane's hand as he sat beside
her, the long day weighing on them both.

Jane shook
slightly beneath the sheets. She was tired of seeing death.

"You look
really pale, Jane. Should I call Dr. Mitchell?"

"No,"
she said. "I'll be all right. This is just too much. I can't handle seeing
my employees kill themselves."

"I
know." He looked at her more deeply. "I probably should call the doctor.
You might be in shock or something."

"No."
She gripped his hand tighter. "I want you to stay but, but-"

"But
what? Jane, I want to stay."

"I don't
think that's a good idea."

He put his
chin in his hand. "Jane, I swear to God, the woman you saw me with
yesterday is my sister. You'll meet her soon, I told you."

Jane felt that
she believed it now, but there was still too much to reckon. "I'm so
confused, Steve. I-"

"I love
you, Jane."

The words
stalled her, like a small car colliding with a large brick wall. I love you
too, she thought, but she just couldn't say it now.

"Let's
talk soon, okay?" he asked. "I want this to work-I want it more than
anything. So many awful things have been happening lately, we can't focus. But
once this is all over..."

"Yes,"
she said. "I want things to work too. And they will.

He seemed
relieved, and by the look in his eyes, Jane knew he was sincere.

"I'll
look in on the kids, make sure they're tucked in, then I'll take off. I'll call
you tomorrow. And if you need anything, call me on my cell or beep me, no
matter what time."

Jane nodded,
squeezed his hand a final time, then let go. He kissed her on the cheek and
left.

Yes, Jane
thought after he left. I love you.

II

Sergeant
Stanton looked ghoulish in the dashboard lights. When he lit a cigarette, the
flickering orange flame gave him a corpse-like hue. Steve sipped a cold cup of
coffee next to him. "That's damn good work. How'd you get a line on
him?"

"Credit
card, or I should say a check card. We extracted his bank records-Jesus, Chief,
the guy almost never has anything in his checking account-but he used it a week
ago-with thirty-five bucks in his account-to get gas at a Citgo station on St.
Pete Beach. Stands to reason that if he's on the road, he's staying in a motel,
but there aren't any receipts from the card. Either that, or he's got cash on
him."

"Or he's
sleeping in his vehicle," Steve suggested.

"Guess
so. But at least we know we can track him when he uses the card. That's the
good news. The bad news is the county magistrate won't give us a warrant to
haul him in for questioning. No evidence for probable cause."

"Goddamn
Constitution." Steve gazed absently out into the night. You're out there
somewhere, Dhevic. I'll find you.

The radio
crackled. Steve answered it and was instructed by the dispatcher to call an
extension on his cell phone.

"Who you
calling?" Stanton asked.

"State police."

"Why?"

"I don't
know, but it can't be good."

III

The voice
fluttered around her head, like great black birds circling. "Behold the
Messenger."

Dhevic's
voice?

Now Sarah's:
"The arrival of the Messenger is at hand."

Jane opened
her eyes but saw nothing, just a landscape of ink black. She tried to get up
from whatever she lay-it felt like a trench of carved stone-but she couldn't.
She couldn't move at all.

"Hail,
Aldezhor."

A dream, Jane
thought desperately. She felt hosed down in warm water but then realized it was
her own sweat. It's just a dream. Wake up.

The darker
voice returned, "He will manipulate you through your fears,

your
weaknesses-"

Jane stared
blindly into black.

"-and
your dreams."

A sound then,
like a guillotine falling, and suddenly she could see. A vista of fire and rock
snapped before her eyes.

Chaos.

The heat took
her breath away. She lay, indeed, in a stone pit, coffin-shaped. When she
finally sat up, more intense heat wafted against her face. She looked down at
her nightgown-clad body and saw that she was emaciated from dehydration and
malnourishment, arms and legs like sticks. Her once-full breasts hung as thin
flaps of skin beneath her drenched gown, her stomach sucked in, her ribs
showing. She had almost no strength yet she willed herself to stand up and look
out at the impossible hellscape.

Black smoke
rose in noxious billows, some streaming from abyssal crevices, some pouring off
of distant piles of bodies. Fire crackled eternally, and in the air, before a
luminous scarlet sky, great beaked things flew leisurely in and out of
dirt-colored clouds. Wind rose and fell, deafening her, but was it really wind
or just an endless gust of screaming?

Figures ambled
up a stone rise. Tall, gaunt, with lopsided bald heads and arms and legs as
long as a normal man's height. Their bodies were the color of curdled milk, and
they were coming for her.

Eventually the
realization smacked home...

I'm in hell...

Jane began to
run. She slipped into a crevice and found herself running through a torch-lit
labyrinth of black rock. Around each corner, a new horror appeared, heralded by
screams. Jane stopped in her tracks at the appearance of two small figures...