The White Night (23 page)

The warmth she
felt from him, that schoolboy crush that had her pretending she didn’t notice
all day long, is now gone. It’s replaced with a black longing. Not a crush, not
affection, but an angry, lustful desperation—not want,
need
.

“Are you okay?”
she asks.

His eyes have
changed—before, they were droopy with exhaustion. He was a man whose life had
been shredded apart by others through no fault of his own. There was a subtle
desperation in the way he looked at the world, silently asking for something to
finally go right again. His eyes held history of someone who had it all, lost
everything, and had learned to accept his fate.

Yet whenever she
had smiled at him, a trace of hope would lighten them.

All of that is
gone, replaced by threatening
intent
.

“Mike?”

He takes a step
closer. “Hello, my pretty one.” It’s Mike’s voice, but polluted and strange.
“Mine. All mine.”

“Get out of him,”
she says, delicately at first, testing the reaction. When nothing comes, she
raises her voice, demanding that the demonic entity leave. Yet again, there’s
no response, only the deliberate, hushed movement closer. She screams, “Mike,
fight it! Don’t let it take you!”

Mike’s hands come
up to chest level, hands spread apart, fingers curled.

“No,” she
whimpers.

He lunges, arms
swinging wide, closing in as Dakota ducks at the last instant, grabbing empty
air.

Dakota drops to
one knee and grasps the last remaining bottle of holy water. She had made fun
of Mike earlier for the ridiculous contraption around his waist, and now, what
remains might not save her life, but it may give her a singular chance at
escape. Her fingers tighten around it as she rolls forward on one shoulder,
rotates, and springs up to her feet, continuing the motion, spinning to face
him.

As Mike—no, not
Mike, the demon inside him—whirls around, she squeezes the tiny bottle with
both hands, the thin stream going straight into his eyes. She says, “Our
Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name…” And she can remember no more.

It wouldn’t matter
anyway because he roars with rage, head turned to the ceiling, teeth bared and
fists clenched.

“Uh oh.” Dakota
sprints for the office door, and before she darts into the illusion of escape,
she sees a small black rectangle next to a lamp.

Mike’s cell phone.

She grabs it,
slams the door behind her, and trips. She breaks her fall with her hands and
pushes up, driving her legs, feeling the muscles forcing her ahead.

In the same
instant, the door booms as Mike’s body pounds into it.

The handle
rattles. The door is wrenched open.

It’s then that
Dakota realizes she has gone the wrong direction.

A wall of muscle,
bone, and demon stands between her and the staircase. Behind her is nothing but
empty room after empty room.

One of which has
an extra patio door leading outside.

Dakota sprints.

All of her
training, her conditioning, the marathons and triathlons, years spent burning
away stress because it worked better than alcohol or prescriptions, has led to
this moment. She knows she can outrun him.
It
.

If she can make it
outside, the only question that remains is, how far is the drop off the
balcony?

There’s nothing
but sand and brush below, but it’s dark, and the second floor balcony hangs
over a hillside, which could mean as little as ten feet at the rear and as much
as twenty or more at the front. Possibly higher? She can’t remember. She’s
never paid that much attention to it. She’s only been out there to sunbathe, and
then that ended when she caught the creepy teenager trying to film her.

I can do it, I can
make the jump, she thinks as she flees. I have to.

She ducks into the
last bedroom on the right and then makes an immediate left.

The sliding glass
door is fifteen feet away.

Freedom.

***

Fire. Rage. Ashes
and smoke in my lungs. I see her running. When she looks back, the fear in her
eyes is fuel for the overwhelming ache for her that invades and engorges every
cell in my body. It’s a cold fire in my veins. I have images in my mind,
memories of a past that doesn’t belong to me. The flames of hell aren’t orange.
They’re black. They lick up the walls, the rocky floor, and across the bodies
of millions of damned souls screaming for eternity.

I run. I reach for
her, grabbing her ankle as she tries to climb over the wall.

Mine. She’s mine.
Now and forever.

“Hello, pretty
one.” I dig my fingers into her strong shoulders and pull her closer. My lips
go to hers as she struggles, screaming for me to stop.

My tongue feels forked
as it invades her warm, inviting mouth.

She retches and—

***

Dakota sprints
across the open upper deck. The smell of salt air and the remaining warmth of
the day provide her with no comfort.

She begs God to
save him.

Sweet, caring Mike.
A good man.

No more. At least
not right now.

How far will he
follow her?

She’s positive she
can run fast enough. She’s not as in shape as she was weeks ago, before this
started, but she can do it. She can get away.

If she can escape
him, maybe long enough to call Father Duke, they could do something for Mike.
But, it’s late. Would the priest answer at this hour? Would he even hear it?
Did he have a hotline for demonic possession emergencies?

Dakota shoves
Mike’s cell phone in her back pocket, and then grabs the top railing that runs
the length of the low wall. She looks over the edge, hesitating a second too
long to see how far the drop is, and says, “Fuck it,” as she tries to pull
herself up. It has to be at least fifteen feet from this spot. Drop down to the
soft sand, land lightly on the balls of her feet, and roll with the hill. Let
gravity do the work.

One foot goes up
to the railing and—

There’s a hand on
her ankle, pulling her back. She screams at his touch, his palm rough on her
skin. Mike whips her around, squeezing hard as he jerks her close.

“Mike! Don’t!” she
screams.

And then his mouth
is on hers.

She had thought
about what a kiss might be like throughout the day, considered the
possibilities. They had bonded over shared fame and their public image, celebrity
and the burdens of maintaining a positive public image. She was vulnerable and
scared. He played the part of her flawed hero well, even though he may not have
known it at first.

She had sensed his
attraction, caught him looking, and had felt it, too. It had been so long since
anyone looked at her that way. Then, Toni. She had recognized her, seen her
time and again, around town and along the beach at odd hours with a man who was
not this man. She had kept quiet, deciding it was none of her concern.

A day spent with
him did not constitute a chance at something more—she was old enough to recognize
reality and responsibility—but there had been no harm in briefly fantasizing
about his lips on hers, much in the same way you daydream about time spent on
warm, sandy beaches with the handsome stranger who held the door open.

Fleeting moments
about
what if
had twisted and snarled the question into
what now
?

This close, she
can smell the sweat on his skin and feel the heat of his body against hers.

His tongue, stiff
and wet, forces itself between her lips and deep into her mouth.

Dakota gags, not
because of Mike, but because of the entity inside him. She considers biting his
tongue, clamping down as hard as she can, severing the slithering muscle in
half.

But she can’t.
Somewhere deep inside, the real Mike is trying desperately to regain control.
He has to be. He would never do this to her, would never allow it to happen.
She hasn’t known him long, but she knows that much.

Instead, Dakota
silently apologizes to Mike, wherever he may be in there, then distracts him
first with a slap to the side of his head, followed by driving her knee up
between his legs, hoping beyond hope that pain is a motivator for the
demonically possessed.

A guttural
oooph
erupts from his mouth, blowing into hers, and he lets go, hands flying down to
his crotch.

Dakota shoves him
away, staggers a few steps back toward the house, and comes to an abrupt halt
when he clamps onto her wrist. He’s down on one knee, using her resistance as a
counterbalance to pull himself up.

She wrenches
sideways, twisting at the hip, bringing her arm up as she spins. Her sole
intent was to hit him hard enough to break free, but luck helps the point of
her elbow to land just behind his eye, instantly knocking him unconscious. Mike
crumples into a heap.

Dakota gasps in
relief, wonders how long she has.

Just hurry, she
thinks. Find something.

A minute later,
she’s kneeling over him, binding his wrists and ankles together using shoestrings
from abandoned sneakers, multiple pairs that she had worn out from years of
training.

Mike groans as she
pulls the cell phone from her pocket.

She scrolls
rapidly through the list of contacts and finds the number she needs. She calls,
and she prays.

One ring. Two rings.
Three.

Fading hope
tightens her chest.

Then, a groggy
voice answers, “Hello?”

“Father Duke? I
need help. It’s about Mike Long.”

***

A hundred yards
north, a grinning teenager can’t believe what he’s just captured. Thank God for
rich, pushover parents and a strong zoom.

He had seen weird
lights in Dakota Bailey’s house. Flashlights going from room to room. Then
rapid, sporadic flashing, illuminating various parts of the house. So he began
recording, curious, not expecting much.

Minutes later,
Dakota hurtled onto the balcony, the same one where he had filmed her
sunbathing so many times—in the nude—and sold those videos and pictures to his
friends for hundreds of dollars.

The man followed.
What would this lead to? The teenager could only cross his fingers and wait.

Even in the green
hue of night vision, it was easy to see that Dakota’s aggressor was Mike Long, one
of the former hosts of
Graveyard: Classified
.

This was worth
more than a few bucks from his friends.

Tabloids would pay
thousands.

Or YouTube. Millions
of hits.
Millions
.

Yes. There it is.
That’s what he’ll do.

He backs away from
his window and sits down at his laptop where he connects a USB cable.

He crops the video
to only use the best parts, uploads it, then waits for the page to go live.

Minutes later, he
emails his friends, and absolutely cannot believe his good fortune. He’ll be on
the front pages of the Internet by the time he wakes up.

That is,
if
he can sleep.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Portland,
Oregon

Ford and Mike Long

I’m not quite sure
how many times I’ve apologized to Ulie, and in the past couple of weeks, I’m
positive he’s put on a doggie pound or two from all the treats I’ve been giving
him.

He’s fine around
me, because I’m the one and only Foodbringer. I’m the Light of His Life. I’m
the One with the Stick. I am the Thrower of All Things.

I am Pillow. I am
Chew Toy. I am He Who Takes Me for a Run Sometimes.

I am also He Who
Will Never Leave My Dog Alone Again. Unless he’s with Melanie.

He gets slightly
skittish when I come into the room unannounced, but other than that, we’re best
buds. When we venture outside the house, it’s elderly ladies that spook him the
most. Can you blame him?

We’ve been going
to a dog park down the street while I slowly try to reintroduce him to the
outside world, away from the security-blanket comfort of his cozy bed in the
corner of my living room. He does fine until the little old ladies with their
yippy growlers try to come over and see if he wants to make friends with
whatever puffball abomination they’re dragging around on the end of a leash.

I make up excuses
for Ulie, tell them that he’s just super shy around other dogs. There would be
no conceivable way to explain the following: “He’s wary around wrinkly old
ladies like you because he thinks you’re going to eat his soul for breakfast.”

One thing that’s
puzzled me since I had my revelation about Lauren Coeburn is the fact that
animals are supposed to be sensitive to the supernatural. Ulie should have been
able to pick up on something as soon as she and Grandma Death Eyes walked into
my condo. I have no reasonable explanation for why he didn’t. The only thing I
can assume is that the entity piloting a black-eyed person has evolved beyond
nature, and is undetectable by standard methods like doggie intuition. It can
lie dormant until it’s time to act. If it doesn’t have an objective, then it’ll
emerge once it’s sapped the available energy from its current host and needs to
feed.

Ford, I’m
hungry.

You need to let
me in.

I can’t blame
Ulie. I like to think of myself as sensitive to the spirit world. Perhaps not
as much as an animal’s innate abilities, but regardless, I missed it too.

I still get
shivers thinking about Lauren being that close to me and how close I came to
having
my
soul devoured.

That would’ve
sucked.

I stayed in
Newport for another three days working with Detectives Carson and Jaynes,
trying to explain to them everything I knew about black-eyed children, which
wasn’t much. I speculated enough to write a book.

We read report
after report online, emailed witnesses and had web chats with those willing to
talk to us. It was the same thing, every single time.

No, they didn’t
let them in.

No, they didn’t
have proof.

Yes, they were
absolutely positive of what they had seen.

They weren’t able
to uncover the identity of those poor boys either. There were no fingerprint
matches in the national records, no DNA, no dental records. Nothing. Nor were
there pictures of missing children that matched. Some came close. Dark hair,
light skin, thin builds, but nothing definitive. It was odd that they didn’t
exist anywhere, and when I suggested that perhaps there was a mother unit
somewhere pumping out fleshy shells to be used as cute and approachable hosts,
Detective Carson lifted his palm and said, “I can’t take any more, Ford. This
shit’s all too weird for me. We’ll take it from here. You go on home, get some
rest. But, hey, keep your phone handy. We might stumble across something else.”

So here I am. I
gave Jesse some time off. He wanted to leave Albuquerque for a while anyway and
do some traveling, and I told him to go before life and his own demons got in
the way.

I’ve been ignoring
calls from unrecognized numbers, letting them go to voicemail, which is how I
know that Carla Hancock has been blowing up my phone.

In a rare move for
the cutthroat she-devil, she apologizes again and again for issuing the press
release and announcing my commitment to the documentary before getting the official
okay from me. Still, she wants to know if I’ve made a decision. The numbers she
offers for my involvement get higher with each successive call. Why bother
telling her that, for me, it’s not about the money?

Although, I
do
enjoy listening to her voice get that tiny hint of desperation each time she
raises her bid.

I’ve been resting,
answering emails, and filing away the raciest picks from the spotcamgirls under
a new folder called “Mom’s Cornbread Recipe.”

I’m not entirely
sure why I do that since it’s just me living here, and it’s not like I’m going
to corrupt Ulie’s young mind if he goes snooping around my laptop.

Well, yeah, I do
know why. I scared Melanie so much that night, she’s been coming around to
check on us. She brings meals for me and rawhide bones for Ulie. She stays a
little longer each time, and it could be because Jeff from the control room is
no longer in the picture.

Ironically enough,
he was too controlling.

I’m not getting my
hopes up, but we even had lasagna
together
the other night and watched a
rerun of
Yes, Chef!
on that twenty-four hour food network. It was the
one where Dakota Bailey concocted a ham and peach tart so amazing that it made
the bald judge get up from his little table of superiority and shake her hand.

And speaking of
Dakota Bailey, that thing with Mike?

Dude
.

***

The very first news
I heard about his situation came by way of Glenda Harrison, that “nothing but
the hard facts!” lady on one of the political news channels. You know the one.
She pounds the desk and yells at people when she thinks they’re lying to her—that
one.

I was still in
Newport and had moved from the contaminated condo to a cheap hotel room. I’d
had a long day of talking to witnesses, so I ended up mindlessly flipping
through channels when I heard this:

“
Tonight! More
news from
Graveyard: Classified
. Are the famous paranormal superstars
possessed, or simply cursed with bad luck?
”

There was some
mention of my state of affairs. Evidently an anonymous source had leaked news
to the media that I’d had a lover’s quarrel with Lauren Coeburn while on a
secret celebrity retreat to the Oregon coast. I left her behind and she
proceeded to get high on whatever designer drugs she had available, had a
violent reaction, went batshit crazy, and essentially committed “suicide by
cop.”

(The “official”
autopsy report stated that it was a rare biochemical reaction that affected the
nervous system. In addition to that, we were ridiculously lucky in the fact
that Lauren had designated that she wanted her eyes donated to science, given
Ellen’s blindness. That solved the lack-of-eyeballs thing before Carson and
Jaynes had her body shipped back to L.A.)

Lover’s quarrel.
Abandoned Lauren.

Screw Glenda
Harrison.

I flipped a cheap
chair and the pathetic coffee table in the hotel room, and thought about suing
Glenda Harrison from here to the end of time. But then, she commended me for
keeping cool and calm in such an unfortunate situation.

If she only knew.

Also, thankfully, whoever
leaked the news had graciously decided to leave out the bit about the hollowed
out shells of two former black-eyed children.

That whole case is
going so deep into the file room that they’ll need an archeologist to find it.

I owe Carson and
Jaynes, big time.

And then, Mike.

Man, I didn’t even
know what to think when I first heard it.

I was stunned.

Since I had been
so involved with the detectives and Lauren’s situation, I hadn’t been online.
Nobody had said anything to me either. How and why someone at the station
failed to mention it is beyond me, and I can only assume that Carson and Jaynes
kept the information from me so I would be able to focus on helping them.

In the video—the
one being broadcast
everywhere
—even with the green hue of night vision,
accompanied by an incredible zoom feature, you can plainly see that it’s none
other than Dakota Bailey. She’s running across the second-level deck of her
beachfront mansion, pursued by my friend, partner, and brother-in-life, Mike
‘The Exterminator’ Long.

Mike grabs her,
forces a kiss. The low wall blocks what happens below their waists, but based
on his reaction, her knee goes up to his crotch, giving her a long second to
break free. He grabs for her again, she spins, delivers an elbow, and my buddy
drops like his parachute failed to open.

The video already
had two million hits before the national media began to get wind of it.

“And get this,
folks,” Glenda Harrison said, “Miss Bailey must be a saint, because she’s
not
pressing charges
. What’s the world coming to? I don’t know about you, but
I’m not buying that whole ‘he was possessed’ excuse for a second.”

Then, for the next
two weeks, since I left Newport and came home, Mike has been getting drawn and
quartered all over the place. Social media, nightly news, cable shows filled
with talking heads, all of them talking about how fame and fading stardom can do
strange things to people. This was despite Dakota’s best efforts to dampen the
critics’ fire. Interview after interview, she defends him and insists that she
bears no ill will toward Mike Long, that it wasn’t his fault, and that she had
enlisted his help to eliminate the evil spirit in her home. If anything, he
should be labeled a hero for facing down such a sinister entity.

Mike’s only saving
grace has been the fact that he has fought demons in the past, possibly adding
a hint of credibility to Dakota’s story.

It doesn’t change
the fact that there are plenty of grievances, people griping online, asking,
“Why is she protecting him?”

I hate it for him.
I really do. I know what it’s like to be the target of such vitriol.

And yet, maybe now
he can understand what I went through with the aftermath of Chelsea’s incident.

The craziest thing
is, I was positive this shit would put a big fat damper on the documentary. We would
be able to move on, and I’d have to find some other way to protect Chelsea from
Boogerface.

Instead, I’m going
to postulate that it increased the interest for a reunion by about seventeen
million percent, which has doubled the calls from Carla, and brought even more
attention to Mike, Dakota, and the video captured by that damn peeping tom.

The teen jerkhole
is eating it up, by the way, making the rounds on the interview circuit. I
heard he reportedly got a six-figure offer to do his own reality series. When
will it ever end?

I’ve tried to call
Mike. Cell, home, his former agent, Dakota’s agent, mine, even Father Duke, but
he’s not answering, and nobody knows how to get in touch with him. I did get a
note from a fan who insists she saw him at a gas station in Kansas. Throughout
the day, three more emails arrived from fans in the same town. They all wanted
to know what was up with Mike, why was he in Kansas, and asked if I would be
willing to tell them.

So, at least he’s
alive. If I can’t get in touch with him within the next couple of days, I’m
calling in a private investigator to track him down. Less attention that way.

Bottom line is,
for now, I’m in the clear and Mike’s not.

It’s strange being
on this side of things.

***

I’m putting the
finishing touches on my world-famous mushroom bacon burgers out on the deck
when I hear the faint ding-dong of my doorbell.

Curious, but not
curious enough to go rushing for the door, I take my time, wiping my hands as I
stroll in from outside, through the living room and kitchen, up the elevated
flooring, and then past the library and bathroom. It might be Melanie, though
she hadn’t mentioned that she would be coming by.

I open the door to
find Mike looking like he’s been living under a bridge for about five years. He
has dark bags under his eyes, scruffy cheeks, about a week’s worth of stubble
on his normally shaved head, and plenty of stains on a plain white t-shirt. His
shorts are wrinkled. One sneaker is untied.

“Mike! You’re
alive.”

“Hey, Ford.”

“The fuck have you
been, man? I’ve been trying to call you for days. Get in here.”

Mike nods and
steps inside, rubs his hands together and looks around. “I like what you’ve
done to the place.”

“No bullshit small
talk. We’re heading straight for the alcohol because you look like you need a
beer. Actually, I should say you look like you need
another
beer. Maybe
something stronger? Whiskey?”

Mike follows me,
saying, “I’m fine, Ford. I already got one mama.”

He leans up
against the kitchen counter while I pull a local-brew lager from the
refrigerator and pop the top off. He takes it, salutes me, and gulps a long
pull from the bottle.

I ask, “How you
holding up?”

Burp
. “Been
better.”

I want to ask him
a million questions, but I don’t know where to start. I
do
know Mike,
and if the past two weeks haven’t completely changed him as a human being,
he’ll get around to the details when he damn well pleases.

He takes another
pull from the bottle and then examines the label. “That’ll put some hair on
your chest, huh? Not like I need it.”

I grab one for
myself. “So.”

“So.”

I chuckle and
nonchalantly ask, “Anything new?”

I feel like he’s
going to hold out on me. He’ll keep his chin up and chest out, we might skirt
some details, and then I’ll get some truth out of him later once I’ve gotten
him hammered.