Broken (12 page)

His skin feels electric, and he can almost feel something vibrating in the air.

Lex turns around and calls out to see if anybody is there, then goes back into the bedroom and turns on the light.

“Hello?”

The sound is gone. He wonders if he heard someone in an
apartment next door. But he hadn’t heard a thing sitting in silence just a few minutes ago.

On a whim he checks the bathroom. And when he turns on the light, he jerks back.

There’s something written on the mirror facing him in bloodred. It’s a message in lipstick. One that wasn’t here when he first
got here.

Follow Kyle

That’s all it says.

He looks around the bathroom, but no one is there. He touches the lipstick, and it smears on the mirror. He’s not imagining
this.

For a moment he wonders if he had missed that, but he knows he didn’t.

“Hello?”

It’s stupid, really, saying this to the nothingness in this place. But he doesn’t know what else to do, and talking and hearing
his own voice strangely helps.

He searches the apartment again to see if anybody is there.

The longer he looks, the more tense he feels. Lex suddenly grows cold, feels bumps rise on his arms, and knows he needs to
get out of here. There’s nothing here anyway except echoes of emptiness.

He closes the bathroom door and ignores the message’s advice.

He’s not thinking of who wrote it.

Part of him doesn’t want to know.

When you lose hope, you let yourself go. You fall. And whatever warm, numbing, freeing place you land, you let be.

Hope.

Hope is a dangerous thing in these times.

It’s an illusion. A painted picture framed and mounted and hidden under glass and protected by armed security. It’s not for
people like me.

Hope is a promise that can’t be fulfilled.

Hope is a pipe dream.

Hope is a person I killed, who will haunt my days and drain my nights.

Hope is pathetic, because it is not and will not and never will be.

H
ow’s the progress of your little quest?”

“It’s only Tuesday, and I told you—”

“I don’t care what you did or didn’t tell me, James. Why do I get the feeling things aren’t working out the way they should
be?”

“I don’t know. You tell me.”

“You know what I’m thinking?”

“I’m sure you’re gonna tell me.”

“I’m thinking you might need a little help. I’m thinking you might need a little motivation.”

James curses. “I’ve got enough motivation to last me a lifetime.”

“Then how come you let her go?”

James shifts his head and scans the parking lots of the gas station.

“You watching me?”

“Everybody is watching everybody, James.”

“I told you I needed another week.”

“Time is ticking away.”

“Yeah, and I’m wasting it talking to you.”

“I don’t have much confidence in you.”

“You wanna come down and do it yourself, fine.”

“No. This isn’t fine. You’ve left me in a mess, and the last thing I want to do is micromanage here. I’m tired of this.”

“And you think I’m not?”

“That is not the point. However you might feel or whatever you might think is not the point. That’s what you’re missing. You
came to me, remember? You came to me because you were in trouble, right? Because you needed help. And did I not help you out?”

“I never said you didn’t.”

“But that means you don’t have a say anymore. It means you are the one that owes me. And I was reasonable with you. The people
I deal with aren’t reasonable, James. And just because your mother and my mother are sisters doesn’t give you the right to
disrespect me.”

“I’m not disrespecting anybody.”

“You’re not going to run off on me, are you?”

“I wouldn’t do that,” he says.

“I used to think that. But nowadays a businessman doesn’t know what to think.”

“Get over yourself, Danny.”

“I’m being serious.”

“Since when were you a ‘businessman’? You’re not Donald Trump.”

The man on the other end launches into a nasty tirade. James can picture the taut veins in Danny’s neck as he curses. The
guy is younger than him but has the audacity to act like this.

“Do I still have a week?”

“Less,” Danny says.

“Good. I’ll get you your money.”

“I want you to report every day. Every morning and every afternoon and every evening.”

“I’m busy, okay?”

“And I’m busy too, keeping you alive. And you’ve got only a little more time or you’re gonna join your brother in hell, James.”

•   •   •

Laila takes an exit an hour south of Memphis already into Mississippi and pulls off at the first hotel she finds. She knows
she needs to stop and breathe and figure out where she’s going. This looks like as good a place as any to do so.

She’s been here before. Many times before.

The room on the third floor with the two double beds resembles any other hotel.

Laila locks the door, then sits on the edge of the bed facing the window. Outside she can see the tops of trees just beyond
the parking lot and the hovering sun fading behind them.

She could be in any state. It doesn’t matter.

They all feel the same.

She stretches out and feels the rough surface of the hotel comforter against her face as she closes her eyes.

She kisses him, but something in the way he kisses makes her pull back. She glances at him but only sees a stranger’s eyes.
They bore into her.

“What?”

But he keeps kissing her as if he’s trying to devour her. Everything is more rushed, rough, and she starts to shake.

“Ben, what’s with you?”

Something on his face is off. Something on it scares her.

“Say something,” she tells him.

“I love you.”

She closes her eyes and kisses him and feels a little better, and then she hears the knock.

His expression changes.

She sees it and suddenly she knows.

Something bad is about to happen.

Nobody should be knocking at the door.

Nobody knows the two of them are here in this motel room.

He is wired and tense. And he glances and smirks, and she knows.

Ben is not surprised at the knock on the door.

“What are you doing?” she asks.

But Ben just smiles, and she suddenly realizes she doesn’t know this boy and that she’s never really known him and that she’s
alone here and can’t do a thing.

She sees the phone but can’t make it there in time.

She turned off her cell.

He drove the car to this place.

Nobody knows she’s here.

“Hey, man,” a voice says.

Two figures walk into the room.

And when she sees their faces and sees Ben’s face, she knows.

She wants to scream but nobody is going to hear.

She swallows, but her mouth is numb and her throat is dry and her lips itch like they’ve kissed the devil himself.

She closes her eyes but knows she can’t leave.

When Laila wakes up, it’s dark. The blinds are still open, and she looks outside. She sees a couple of restaurants and a gas
station along with the passing lights of vehicles on the interstate. She can see her faint reflection in the glass and shuts
the blinds to get rid of it.

“You need to get a grip and figure out what’s going on.”

Laila touches the phone on the desk, lets her hand stay on the receiver, then lets it go.

On the edge of the bed, she thinks through her options. Something keeps gnawing at her, and she doesn’t have to think hard
on it. She knows where she wants to go. She will leave tomorrow and keep driving until she gets there.

She glances at the phone again. She stares at it as if waiting for it to speak, as if it’s going to spring up and coil around
her neck and strangle her.

•   •   •

There is something in the apartment with him. Not someone, but something. Something that reminds him of his teenage days and
nights, of the things he sometimes saw, the manifestations in the heart of the depths of the desert. He thinks of Aunt Maxie
and of the voodoo magic she often talked about with such fondness.

“Get away from me, Satan,” Lex says again.

He knows that he is safe from harm, that nothing can happen to him outside of God’s control. But that doesn’t mean he is safe
from fear.

And even perhaps from pain.

The sounds started at midnight. The first came in the form of a bouncing ball, a basketball, pounding on the floor of the
kitchen. Lex woke up and jumped out of the bed and went in to turn on the light, only to find nothing. This happened again
with the sound of laughter. And then with the sound of fireworks going off.

Each time he went outside the room to see if someone was there. With the last, Lex could smell and taste the scent the firecrackers
left behind.

Yet he still found nothing. No visible proof of anything in Laila’s apartment.

He kneels at the edge of his bed with his head propped against
it, and he does all he knows to do. He has been deep in prayer this entire trip, but now more than ever.

As he prays, the handle on the door turns.

“God, help me. Deliver me from this darkness, Lord.”

The door swings open and slams against the wall. Lex looks at the entryway but doesn’t see anything.

He hears the sound of spraying and then smells the fumes.

“What…”

Lex goes to the doorway and walks into the bare room outside the bedroom. The scent of fresh paint burns at his nose.

He turns.

In various colors and sizes, a message is painted across the blank wall.

“Follow him,” it says, over and over and over again.

Lex walks up to the wall and touches it. Red paint rubs off on his finger.

He smells it.

It’s real.

He shakes his head and walks back into the bedroom. It’s almost one in the morning.

He gets his bag and decides to get out of this apartment.

He knows there are other things out there that are not of this world. And even though he is no longer a slave of them, it
doesn’t mean he doesn’t have the sense to avoid them when they’re running rampant.

Words have a freeing power to them. Almost as if they can take the blame and the guilt and the pain when written down. I write
these words in this journal for no one but myself. For no eyes to see. I think that I ultimately write them for you. And to
you.

It helps a little. But I know they can’t atone. I know they can’t amend. I know they will never ever make up for my mistakes.

I write because sometimes they bubble up inside and boil over and the only thing I can do–that I can possibly do–is write
them down.

How I long to know what it would be like to take these confessions and bundle them up and leave them at someone’s door.

W
hat do you mean it’s not working?”

“I swiped it twice and put in the numbers, and it still doesn’t work.”

James looks at the pimply kid and wants to yank that look off his teenage face.

“Try again.”

The boy tries again in a way that looks like he’s sleepwalking. Then he shakes his head slowly and gives the card back to
him.

“You got any cash? It’s just four bucks.”

He’s going to say something but then doesn’t. James grits his teeth, then walks outside the gas station and spits on the ground.

It’s the middle of the night, and he’s starving. And he doesn’t even have enough money to get some crackers and a soda.

Sitting on the curb, James curses. He needs a drink. Or maybe he needs a little more. Just a little taste. It’s been a couple
of years and that was why he got into this mess in the first place, but now with his head hurting and the voices whipping
back up in a hurricane, he knows a little taste would calm him and help him think more clearly.

With a sigh, he opens his phone and makes a call.

He doesn’t want to, but he has to.

“We have to go to plan B,” he says.

“What exactly is plan B?”

James curses again. “Do I need to think of everything here?”

“What should we do then?”

James sighs and moves his boot over the gravel in the parking lot. He thinks for a moment, then tells him what they’re going
to do.

He speaks slowly and carefully.

This wasn’t going to be part of the plan, but right now he doesn’t have a choice.

Nothing’s been part of the plan for a very, very long time.

“Will it work?” he asks James.

“Just trust me, okay? Two more days of this, then I’m done. Two more and that’s it.”

James hangs up the phone and listens to the cars passing on the interstate nearby. He thinks of the words he just said and
realizes he’s been saying that for the last two years. And really he’s been saying that for the last two decades.

“I’ll never be done.”

No matter what he does and what he says and what he plans, he knows the same devil chasing him will be there, right beside
him, right there to warm his cheek with that nice little grin.

•   •   •

The tongue licks her forehead, and that’s when Laila awakes in a scream.

She blinks her eyes but remains still.

Then she hears it.

The laugh.

A hellish, deep laugh from right next to her.

And as she goes to move, something holds her back. An arm bears down on her chest.

She smells something foul. Something unlike she’s ever smelled before. And in the darkness she can make out a figure sitting
on her bed. She starts to scream again, but a hand like sandpaper cups her mouth and forces her wail to wilt away.

“Shut your mouth,” the voice breathes on her.

Laila tries to reach out, but her arm just touches the darkness. For a moment she wonders if she’s dreaming this, but she’s
feeling light-headed from the hand restricting her from breathing. She lies still and mumbles okay over and over, and he releases
his grip.