Midnight Solitaire (13 page)

FIFTEEN

They stand watching Doc, taking it all in, doing their best to process the impossible. Wind blows snow against the glass. Accumulating now, it creeps slowly up the front of the building. Beyond, in the lot, the cars are now covered.

“I’m so sorry for your family,” Greer says softly.

He doesn’t say the words, but Doc’s expression reveals his appreciation.

“How do I reconcile this with my own beliefs?” Kit asks, eyes behind her glasses wide with bewilderment and dread. “I don’t believe in these things.”

Luke points to the roof. “I don’t think he much gives a shit.”

“Doesn’t matter what you believe.” Doc lights a cigarette, smokes it steadily, manically. “It’s beyond that now. It’s down to living or dying.”

“Isn’t it always?” Greer says. Distracted, she moves toward the front counter and peers up at the vent. “From the moment we realize we’re alive?”

Before Doc can respond, Luke says, “So you got this thing that can—what’d you call it—
bind
him? Then let’s do it.”

After another quick drag, Doc exhales through his nose, drops the cigarette to the floor and steps on it. “Not quite that easy.”

“Why not?”

“The binding has to be done up close. He’s not going to just stand there and submit to it. He’ll fight with everything he has, and that’s a lot.”

Kit notices Greer studying the vent but says nothing. Instead she begins retrieving her manuscript pages from the floor and front desk and gathering them into a stack.

“What if you don’t make it?” Luke asks. “What if he takes you down first? You need to show us how to do it, just in case.”

“Did any of you hear that?” Greer asks, still gazing up at the vent.

The others stare at her.

“Whispers. I can hear him, he…he’s whispering my name.” She points to the vent. “From there.”

“He wants you to listen.” Doc moves between Greer and the counter, reaches out and gently touches her shoulder. “Don’t.”

She searches his face for some measure of how to do that. “You really can’t hear it? None of you can?”

“No matter what he says, don’t listen.”

As Greer moves back over to the front wall, Kit nervously stuffs her manuscript pages into the knapsack, then begins collecting the items strewn across the couch and floor that were emptied from it earlier. “I smoked a blunt a while ago. Keep hoping it’s like the best weed ever and this is all a drug trip, right? Because I really don’t know what to do here, I am totally not equipped for this kind of thing. I still can’t believe it’s actually happening.”

“Hiding here has been a temporary solution from the start,” Doc explains. “He hasn’t tried to get in, but he will, and we have to move before that happens. Because once he decides he’s coming, there’ll be no stopping him.”

Kit drops her knapsack onto the couch. “Where are we supposed to go?”

“We need to—”

“What we need to do,” Luke interrupts, “is stop running and hiding and start fighting. If you’ve got what you need to stop this fucker then do it. Up close, far away, whatever, let’s take this piece of shit down while we got the numbers.”

“First he needs to be trapped.” Doc reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out the talisman he told them about, a crystal roughly the size of a golf ball dangling from the end of a black satin cord. “Then he can be bound.”

“And that’s gonna do it?”

“You better hope so, because it’s the only chance we have.”

Kit sighs. “Tell me you’re kidding. I have pretty much the same thing in my car hanging from the rearview. Somehow I’m thinking the key to stopping evil in the universe doesn’t boil down to a trinket some kid made in China I bought at a kiosk for three dollars.”

Ignoring her comment, he returns the crystal to his jacket pocket and asks, “Is there anything more to this property? Any other buildings, maybe out back or nearby?”

Greer suddenly seems as fascinated with the glass front wall as she was with the vent just seconds before. She reaches out and gently presses her hands on the sheet of glass, as if seeing it for the first time.

Kit watches Greer a moment, as if to be sure of her, and then answers. “There’s an old storage shed behind the office. And there’s a small diner out back, but it’s been closed and locked up for a couple years now.”

“A diner?”

“They used to serve food here back in the day. But I guess there wasn’t enough business to keep it going so they shut it down. It’s just been sitting there for quite awhile as I understand it.”

“How many ways in?”

“Front door and a service door for deliveries in back, but the front’s been locked and the back’s been bolted shut for years. It’s mostly metal, with windows along the front, long wide ones, you know what I mean.”

“What’s the setup inside like?”

“Standard diner, I guess.”

“Tables, booths, what?”

“I’ve only been back there once.” Kit thinks a moment. “Booths and a counter with stools, kitchen in back.”

“Any open floor space?”

“Some. Just inside the door. Why?”

Rather than answer Doc says, “I assume it’s locked. Is there a key?”

Kit motions to the office. “There’s a ring of keys in the middle desk drawer, the one with the green rubber cover is a master key, supposedly opens anything with a lock on the premises.”

“We have to get back there.”

“Why?” Luke asks.

“That’s where we’ll trap him. That’s where we’ll bind him.”

“How long does the binding last?”

“Eternity. It imprisons him.”

“He can’t get out?”

“Only if someone lets him out.”

“But why back there?” Luke asks. “Why not just do it here?”

“He won’t fall for it here and there’s no time anyway. We have to reestablish then catch him off-guard. Kit, grab me that master key. Let’s get ready to move. We’ll go as one.”

Luke steels himself. “We’re just gonna make a break for it?”

“No other way.”

Doc sees what Greer is up to and already knows what she’s thinking, what she’s been told in whispers and strange voices slithering through her head. Although it’s just dawning on her now, he’s been aware of it from the start. But there’s been no time to bring it up or worry about it until now. The Dealer won’t stay on the roof forever.

“I don’t understand,” Luke says as Kit returns from the office with the key. “If the goal is to bring him to us, why not just wait here until he comes and then do it? Why risk going from one place to another?”

Doc sidles up next to Greer. “You all right?”

She shakes her head no. “This wall is almost entirely glass.”

“Yes.”

Greer finally tears her eyes from the wall and looks at Doc. “He’s toying with us, isn’t he? This really is all a game to him, isn’t it?”

Doc nods.

“You blocked the threshold but…but this is glass.”

“We go as one.” Doc grabs his bag and the shotgun then takes Greer by the arm and pulls her clear of the front wall. “Kit, you know exactly where it is, so you lead the way. Don’t hesitate, don’t ask questions and don’t look back. Just get us there.”

“Hold on,” Luke says. “If he’s coming then—”

“He’s not coming,” Doc tells them, his jaw tight. “He’s here.”

Kit moves closer to the candlelight. The glow better illuminates her face, better reveals her fear. But before she can speak something appears through the darkness outside, moving at an incredible speed. It breaks through the curtains of snow and flies into and through the front wall, exploding the enormous pane and sending shards of glass spraying and raining down on the office and everyone in it.

Amidst screams, The Dealer lands near the front desk like a giant leather bird, duster flapping in the wind as snow and ice and glass showers down all around him, bringing with him the night, the storm and the evil in all three.

SIXTEEN

It’s like a dream, really. The horrible dreams of children being pursued by unimaginable evil, where beauty is deadly and the night is a living, breathing entity set on devouring them. Wherever they look, a maze of plump flakes blow about, walls of snow dancing and whirling in the darkness as cloudbursts of breath billow from their mouths and nostrils in swirling plumes, their hearts crashing, lungs burning, eyes watering. And the horror, the blind panic and crippling fear only children or the doomed can truly fathom, it’s there too, running along with them through the icy storm like the lethal companion it is.

The boogieman is real, and he’s right on their heels.

Kit leads the way. Luke and Greer run a close second. Doc pulls up the rear, spinning and wildly firing the shotgun as he staggers out through the newly formed portal in the front of the building. A deafening boom shatters the night but is quickly swallowed by the wind. Doc cannot be sure he hit him, and doesn’t wait to find out. Slipping and sliding through the snow, which is now well beyond their ankles, the group runs around the corner of the office and into deeper night, the flakes coming at them as if part of some greater, more complex attack.

At first it seems Kit’s promise of a safe destination is little more than a cruel joke, as darkness and snowfall conspire to make visibility virtually nil. But as they run, the rotted shell of an old car becomes visible through the tempest, and Kit yells back to them over her shoulder. Had they been able to hear, they’d have known she was telling them they were close, but due to the wind, her voice is a muffled and distorted cry in the night.

Silhouettes of two buildings, one small, the other a larger, longer, squat structure, appear through the darkness. Kit reaches the second well ahead of the others and frantically wipes the lock free of snow and ice before plunging the key into it.

Once the lock is disengaged she slams a shoulder into the door but bounces right off. She realizes then that it opens out not in, and with a violent yank, frees the door then turns to see the others filing toward her. She ushers Greer then Luke inside then squints through the snow for Doc.

He’s not there.

“Where’s Doc?” Greer screams to her from inside the diner.

“Doc!” Kit yells. “Doc!”

Luke returns to the open doorway, gun leveled at the night. “He doesn’t show in another couple seconds he’s done.”

“I thought he was right behind us!” Greer cries.

And then he appears, his long silver hair flailing in the wind as he scuttles toward them, the shotgun in one hand and his nylon bag in the other.

.38 still at the ready, Luke steps back in and away from the door.

Kit joins the others inside but holds the door open. Come on, she thinks, dismissing visions of The Dealer jumping out of the swirling snow behind him and snatching him away to darkness. Come on.

As Doc finally reaches the diner he slides the bag onto the floor out in front of him and drops to his knees. Out of breath, his chest heaves and he coughs uncontrollably while Luke pulls the door closed and Kit quickly locks it.

The others crouch or squat down alongside Doc in the dark. Wet, cold and exhausted, even once his coughing spell has stopped no one speaks. The only sound is their collective labored breath.

Outside, the storm fights to get in. But there is no sign of The Dealer.

His coughing under control, Doc scrambles for his bag. He rifles through it until he finds a large piece of chalk then sets to work on the floor just inside the door. “Make sure the place is secure best you can,” he says, still trying to catch his breath.

“Can’t see shit in here,” Luke snaps, crawling toward the front windows. “If you got anymore of those candles, get one going.”

“Check the back,” Doc orders, furiously drawing on the floor with his chalk.

Using Doc’s Zippo, Greer and Kit stumble through the diner, around the counter and into the back through a swinging door. The kitchen is empty but for debris on the floor and some old chairs and boxes piled in the far corner. Just beyond a walk-in freezer is the back door, which they find to be secure and locked tight.

“All set,” Kit says.

“And there’s no other way in?”

“Only the windows, and he’ll have to break those first.”

“Doesn’t seem to have any problems with that.” Greer’s face, barely visible in the flame from the lighter, peers at her through the darkness. “I don’t see how we’re any safer here than we were back there, but I’m trusting Doc knows what he’s talking about.”

“What choice do we have?”

Greer nods. “We better get back out there.”

Ironically, it is the sound of shattering glass that sends them running back out into the main area of the diner. The lighter goes out, plunging them into total darkness even before they pass through the swinging door behind the counter.

“Get down!” Doc screams.

Despite the darkness they can see snow exploding through the front door and feel the wind as it cuts through the diner. The glass in the door has been blown out and lies in shards on the floor and along one of the booths. Holding hands, Kit and Greer drop to the floor as another shot booms above the shrieking wind and a corner of the lunch counter blows apart.