Your Turn to Suffer Page 18

  The deathscream of All receded in his consciousness as survival instinct kicked in, but he was still aware of it in the back of his mind, and he knew he always would be. He needed to get the hell out of the street before—

  A big black car of indeterminate make came racing toward him. He caught a glimpse of the driver, a man wearing sunglasses even though it wasn’t particularly sunny this afternoon. He thought then of what Lori had told him of her dreams – no, her nightmares – of riding along the Nightway in a black car driven by a man who had no eyes. He didn’t question that this was the same man driving the same car. He could sense it, and even if he hadn’t been able to do so, the bastard’s cruel grin would’ve told him the man had come to kill him.

  The black car came at him fast, so fast that he wasn’t sure he’d be able to avoid it. He was tempted to stand there and let the vehicle run him down. Now that he’d heard the deathscream of the universe, he understood in the deepest level of his being that death was the ultimate end product of life. There was no point in continuing, of delaying the inevitable. The only reason he didn’t let the car hit him was because he feared the universe’s deathscream would follow him down into nonexistence and he’d never be free of it.

  The black car was mere inches from hitting him when he threw himself to the right. At first he thought that despite his expectations he was going to make it, but then the edge of the vehicle’s front bumper struck his left foot. The impact spun him around, flipped him over, and he hit the asphalt on his back. Pain shot through his body like lightning, and this time when he cried out, he was able to hear his own voice. His cry was a needle that punctured the bubble of silence, and the sounds of the world rushed in upon him once more. He heard the screeching of tires as drivers fought to avoid hitting him, and he heard people on the sidewalks shouting, although he couldn’t make out what they were saying. He still heard the non-sound of the universal deathscream, though, and he knew he always would. It was part of him now.

  He hurt all over, but he pushed himself up on all fours anyway, ignoring the fiery pain in his left leg and his back’s shrieking protests. He faced the direction the black car had gone, but he saw no sign of it. He turned his head toward Grinders, and among the crowd that had gathered on the sidewalk, he saw the goat-eyed woman. She smiled at him as her hands began moving.

  Next time, she signed.

  Then she turned and began walking away. Larry tried to follow her with his eyes, but a wave of weakness came over him and his arms could no longer support him. He fell to the ground, and the impact – while mild – sent fresh pain shooting through his injured body. He heard people running toward him now, heard someone shout, “Call nine-one-one!” and then he felt himself slipping away into darkness. He didn’t know if he was dying or merely losing consciousness, and right then he didn’t care. But whatever was happening to him, wherever his spirit might end up, he knew the universal deathscream would be there to keep him company.

  And then darkness rushed in and he knew no more.

  Chapter Nine

  “Tell me again why we have to go to the mall?”

  Maureen McGuire sat behind the wheel of the police cruiser. It was raining, not too heavily, and the windshield wipers were doing a good job of keeping the glass clear. It was overcast, almost dark enough to be twilight, and she had the headlights on. The lights might not be absolutely necessary – it wasn’t that dark – but Maureen believed in being proactive when it came to safety. When you were a cop, especially if you’d been on the job as long as she had, it was too easy to become lazy, to start cutting corners, to think that just because you’re a cop, nothing bad can happen to you. Like doctors who don’t believe they’ll ever get sick or judges who think they’ll never be found guilty of a crime. That was why she always followed the rules. She drove to the speed limit – unless it was an emergency – and she always used her turn signal, always came to a full and complete stop at intersections. So if it was even close to dark enough to turn on the headlights, that’s what she did.

  Next to her, her partner said, “Because we have work to do there.”

  Rauch didn’t look at Maureen as he answered, and his tone was relaxed, almost amused, as if he were enjoying some joke that she wasn’t aware of. Maureen didn’t turn to look at him, though. She always kept her eyes on the road when driving. She wanted to ask, What kind of work? but she didn’t. If Rauch wasn’t in the mood to go into detail about something, no amount of coaxing could get it out of him. Rauch liked to play things close to the vest, and while this frustrated Maureen, she’d learned to live with it during their time working together.

  She frowned. Just how long had they been partners? She couldn’t remember. Not all that long, she supposed. At least, that’s what it felt like. She honestly had no idea, which was weird. Weirder still, for most of her career she’d driven a cruiser solo. Oakmont wasn’t a big city, and there wasn’t enough money in the budget to hire so many officers that they rode two to a cruiser. Maureen hadn’t ridden with another cop since she’d been a green-as-they-come rookie. So why was she now partnered with Rauch? And hadn’t they been working the night shift yesterday? Yeah, they had. So what were they doing working this afternoon, too? She’d never been assigned a day shift immediately following a night one before.

  Her frown deepened as she realized she couldn’t remember going home last night. She remembered responding to a break-in call at that woman’s apartment. Her name escaped Maureen now, but she remembered what she looked like well enough, and also the layout of her place. But as to what she and Rauch had done after leaving the woman’s apartment…. She didn’t have a clue. Had she and Rauch been driving around ever since then? Again, she didn’t know, but she had a feeling that Rauch hadn’t been with her the entire time. Sometimes he was there and sometimes he wasn’t. Where he went or what he did while he was gone was yet one more thing Maureen didn’t know.

  Maureen was divorced, and the two children she’d had with her ex were grown and long on their own. She’d never remarried, so if she had been out all night, there was no one in her life to notice. The thought depressed her.

  They were less than a mile from the mall when they hit a red light. Maureen braked to a stop and turned to look at Rauch, intending to ask him to explain what the hell was going on, because something sure as shit was. Rauch continued looking straight ahead, but before Maureen could speak, three slits opened in Rauch’s neck. They spread wide, revealing red flesh inside, and they remained like that for a moment before closing. Maureen was revolted by Rauch’s— What were they? Gills? But she wasn’t alarmed by them. She had the feeling that she’d seen this happen before, had seen it a lot of times. She couldn’t remember when, precisely – big surprise – but she felt certain she’d witnessed the slits opening and closing before, sometimes faster, sometimes slower. And while she didn’t know for sure, couldn’t with her terrible memory, she thought she’d never asked Rauch about them, that it had never even occurred to her until now that she should ask, that something wasn’t right – was in fact terribly wrong – about her ‘partner’. But she still didn’t find the words or the will to speak. It was as if some kind of force was keeping her from thinking or talking about certain things, subjects that Rauch might not wish to address.

  Rauch’s neck gills opened and closed twice more before the light turned green and Maureen remembered to remove her foot from the brake and put it down on the gas pedal. The cruiser pulled into the intersection and neither Rauch nor Maureen spoke for the next few minutes. When they drew near one of the mall’s entrances, Maureen slowed, hit the cruiser’s right turn signal, and turned into the lot. The mall’s official name was the extraordinarily pretentious Horizon’s Edge, but no one seemed to remember why it had been chosen. Almost everyone in town simply referred to it as The Mall. Whoever had designed the parking lot had been overly optimistic. Maureen had never seen all the spaces filled. Even at Christmas, only a third to
a half of the spaces were ever used by customers. Today was no exception. There were only a handful of cars in the lot, and almost all of them were parked close to the main entrance. The building was two stories high, long, and made of dull whitish-gray brick, which made it look more like a prison than a shopping center.

  “Pull up to the entrance,” Rauch said. “Use one of the handicapped spaces.”

  It was illegal for them to park there, and while Maureen would usually never do such a thing on her own, she did so now at Rauch’s command. She didn’t know why she felt compelled to follow the man’s orders, but she was and she did. Once they parked, Maureen left the engine running, headlights and wipers on.

  “Now what?” she asked.

  Rauch turned to her, and she saw that not only was the man smiling, he was holding a phone up, the screen facing Maureen. On the phone was a photo of a woman Maureen didn’t recognize – a petite blonde dressed in a gray blazer and looking every inch the professional working woman – her arm draped around the shoulder of a young brown-haired boy.

  “Who are they?”

  Rauch’s smile widened, and his neck gills began opening and closing rapidly, making wet flapping sounds, like the noises a fish might make flopping around on the bottom of an angler’s boat.

  “They’re who we’ve come here to see. Well, who you’ve come to see. You’ve got a message to deliver to them – a very special one.”

  Then he laughed, and after a moment, Maureen – although she didn’t know why – began laughing too.

  * * *

  Maureen walked through the mall, scanning her surroundings as she went. Situational awareness was important when you were a cop, and it had long become second nature to her. She took in the people – mostly old folks and mothers with young children at this time of day – walking past her, heading in the opposite direction. She glanced into the shops as she walked by, her gaze zeroing in on the registers to make sure no one was being robbed. People avoided meeting her eyes, and those who did looked at her quickly and then looked away. People treated cops like predators whose attention they didn’t want to attract, and while this response was one of the things she liked least about her job – after all, she’d sworn to serve and protect these people, not frighten them – their reluctance to focus their attention on her was useful now. No one questioned the presence of a cop in public. An armed cop. They just wanted to go about their business without said cop hassling them. This meant no one would think to stop her before she reached the play area, before she could complete the task she’d come here to do. She was a little fuzzy on why she had to do it, though. Rauch had explained it to her in the car, and it had seemed to make perfect sense at the time. But now that she was inside the mall, alone, she was no longer so certain of her mission. Maybe she should go back to the cruiser and talk with Rauch some more, make sure she fully understood what she was supposed to do, and why it was so important. Rauch had stressed that it was absolutely vital that she complete the task she’d been sent to do, that the Balance depended on it. Maureen didn’t know exactly what the Balance was or why it was so important, but Rauch had made a big deal of it, and Maureen saw no reason why the man would lie. She trusted her partner, even if she couldn’t remember when they’d become partners. Still, she didn’t feel right about the job she’d come here to do, felt unsettled, doubtful. Good cops knew when to rely on their gut, and hers was telling her she needed to rethink the situation, get a better handle on it, get some clarification. Because once she got to work, she would be fully committed, no take-backs.

  She stopped walking, was about to turn around, when a recent memory flashed in her mind. She saw Rauch sitting in the front passenger seat of the cruiser, the upper half of his body turned so that he could face Maureen.

  Do you understand what I’ve told you?

  Yes, Maureen had answered.

  Good. And just to make sure you don’t have second thoughts….

  Rauch’s neck gills had widened. He’d closed his mouth, tightened the muscles in his neck, and a chuffing sound had filled the cruiser as jets of black gas shot forth from the slits. A black cloud enveloped Maureen’s head, cutting off her vision. The gas smelled sour and rank, like spoiled milk and rotten meat. She’d been caught off guard, and she inhaled the noxious stuff before she could stop herself. As bad as the shit stank, she hadn’t coughed, and the cloud quickly dissipated. She’d felt calm then, relaxed, compliant, happy – even eager – to do whatever Rauch asked of her.

  The memory of that awful stench wiped away her doubts as effectively as if she’d gotten a fresh dose of the gas. She’d come here to do a job – an important one – and she intended to see it through. She unsnapped the safety strap on her side holster, put her hand on the butt of her Glock, and continued on toward the play area.

  * * *

  “Look at me, Mommy!”

  Brian climbed on top of the bulbous yolk of a gigantic over-easy egg and jumped. Reeny watched as he landed on a section of egg white. The plastic was slick, and his feet slid out from under him and he went down on his butt. She rose from the bench where she’d been sitting, intending to go to him and see if he was hurt. But he got up laughing, stepped off the egg, and started running toward an equally gigantic waffle covered with plastic syrup and a plastic pat of melting butter. Her assistance not required, Reeny sat back down and marveled at how resilient children could be. Why couldn’t people keep that quality and take it with them into adulthood? It would make getting through life a hell of a lot easier.

  She’d intended to take Brian to the park after picking him up from preschool, but the rain had necessitated a change of plan. Instead, she’d brought him to Horizon’s Edge. A silly name for a cheap, tacky place that always smelled like greasy fried food, popcorn, soda, and cotton candy. Unlike some kids, Brian wasn’t tired after school. He was always revved up, so Reeny took him to the park to burn off some of that energy before she took him home. If she didn’t, he’d run around like a little lunatic and drive her crazy while she tried to make dinner. But the weather being what it was, she’d brought Brian to the mall today. More especially, to the play area, not far from the food court. And maybe its proximity to food was why it had been designed in such an unusual way. Instead of standard play equipment to climb on, jump on, or slide down, the area contained giant plastic sculptures of breakfast food: eggs, pancakes, waffles, sausage links, muffins, tall glasses of milk and orange juice, and even a mug of coffee. The drink sculptures were too large for children to climb, so they mostly ignored these, although occasionally some kids would chase each other around them. Running, climbing, and jumping were the primary activities children could engage in here, and while school-age children would tire of the breakfast sculptures quickly, toddlers and preschoolers didn’t need much in the way of outward stimulation in order to make their fun – thank god.

  There were maybe a dozen kids playing, a roughly even mix of boys and girls, running around, laughing, and yelling while their tired parents sat on benches positioned around the play area. Some, like her, were watching their children have fun, while most gazed down at their phones. She watched Brian fall into a game of tag with several other children, smiling at the easy way they played together. If only adults could make friends so easily. Brian looked like his father – lean, narrow-faced, thick brown hair – but he didn’t have his father’s athletic grace, not yet anyway. Charles owned and operated a cleaning company called We Got It Maid. But he’d been on both the football and basketball teams in high school, and now he ran several miles each morning and played doubles tennis with her at the weekends. She hoped Brian would inherit his father’s physical abilities. She’d been awkward and clumsy growing up, and she hoped her son could avoid having to deal with other kids teasing him because he wasn’t good at sports. Neither she nor Charles were shallow people, at least she hoped they weren’t. They didn’t judge others by their physical gifts. What was inside a pe
rson’s mind and heart was infinitely more important than whether they could do a layup or hit a fastball. But the reality was that the fast, the strong, and the agile had an easier time of it in this world – certainly when they were young – and as a mother, she wanted her child to have the best life he could.

  Her thoughts drifted toward Lori then. Her sister had been on her mind ever since their lunch earlier, and she hadn’t been able to concentrate on anything else. She was worried about Lori – deeply worried – and she wondered if she’d made a mistake by not staying with her after their talk at A Taste of Thai. Maybe she should’ve canceled the afternoon’s showings and invited Lori over to her house where they could’ve continued talking. Maybe she should’ve tried to convince Lori to check herself into a hospital for a psychiatric evaluation. Lori’s mental health had been good for the last…had it really been seventeen years? But Aashrita’s death during their senior year in high school had hit her hard, and it had taken her some time to recover. Sometimes Reeny thought Lori had only partially recovered. By unspoken agreement, they didn’t talk about Aashrita, but every once in a while one of their parents would bring up the subject, and when that happened, Lori became distant, distracted, almost as if she went into a kind of trance. Reeny didn’t need to be a psychologist to know her sister had unresolved issues regarding Aashrita’s death. She’d tried talking to Lori about it a couple times over the years, but she’d gotten nowhere, had only elicited blank looks and silence, so she’d given up. Now she wished she hadn’t. Maybe if she’d been more persistent, had been able to convince Lori to get help, she wouldn’t be having delusions about being persecuted by some otherworldly secret society.