Shadow of the Past (36 page)

“I’ll be back to deal with you, but
right now we have some guests trying to leave the party, and that’s
just not acceptable.”

Mark raised his head weakly and found
himself staring into the ragged mass of flesh that used to be
Jack’s face. The hole in his head now filled with the swirling
black smoke of Darren’s essence

“Sweet dreams,” the Darren-driven Jack
said. He swung the cane down onto the back of Mark’s head again and
drove him down into the floor and unconsciousness.

Chapter
Thirty-Three

“This is not good,” David
said.

“Oh really? You could’ve fooled me,”
Christine said, turning in place in the middle of the abandoned
kitchen.

“Christine, relax, okay? We’re going to
be fine,” David said. He put his hands on her shoulders and guided
her towards the seat that Mark had been in.

“What if . . . whatever the fuck was in
him got back in him? What if it comes after us?”

“Nothing is going to come after us,
okay? We’re going to be fine. I just want you to sit here, take
some deep breaths and I’m going to look around. I’m not going to go
out of your sight, okay?”

She nodded, and he got up and began to
walk around the kitchen. There was an archway that led into the
dining room they saw from the front of the house, and a doorway
that looked to lead into the back of the house. David pushed it
open, sending up a large cloud of dust.

“Mark, where are you?” David called
into the back of the house. There was no answer, and Christine
turned to look at the only other way out of the room.

“Detective?”

“Yeah?”

“The basement.”

“Dammit.”

He crossed over to the basement door,
leading with his pistol. “Just stay here, okay? If something
happens to me, just go. Try to break a window or something. If
Mark’s not down there, I’m going to come right back up,
okay?”

She nodded with little
enthusiasm.

“It’s going to be alri--” The cane
swung out at him from the basement doorway, arcing downwards and
knocking David’s pistol out of his hands. David turned back to face
the doorway just in time to catch the cane flying back up and into
his face, sending him down to the ground. With a scream, Christine
leapt to her feet, and had half turned to run for it when the voice
stopped her in her tracks.

“Don’t move, sweetheart.”

In the doorway was Jack’s body grinning
and staring at her with its one eye. The hole where his other eye
and nose used to be now swirled with the black smoke that Mark had
vomited up.

Detective Prescott reached for his gun,
but Smoke-Filled Jack stomped his foot down on his hand, grinning
wide at the sound of bones crunching underfoot. Before David could
finish yelling in pain, Jack swung the cane down into the back of
his head. It took four solid hits before David stopped moving, and
Jack added a fifth just for fun.

“That was invigorating,” he said,
turning his attention to her.

She found herself shuffling for the
door and wondering why she’d stopped when he told her too. It was
magic, she told herself. Smoky ghost magic, and had nothing to do
with the terror overpowering her common sense. Now that she
realized this, it’d be the perfect time to run. Just turn and run.
Grab one of those old chairs and hurl it through a window and not
stop running until she saw the National Guard.

Smoke-Filled Jack smiled wider,
splitting more of the skin in his face and causing more blackness
to seep out of the tears in his flesh. “Don’t do it,” he said, his
voice sounding almost like Jack’s but with another one just below
the surface.

She shuffled her feet towards the
doorway closest to her.

“I said,” Jack’s corpse said, reaching
out with his free hand, palm down. “Don’t.” David’s gun floated up
into his hand, the barrel now aimed squarely at her.

“Come here,” he said.

She shook her head, inching again
towards the doorway.

“Christine. Come. Here.” There was a
click as he pulled back the hammer with his thumb.

“You’re going to kill me anyway,” she
said.

“Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe I’ll kill
him,” pointing the pistol down at Detective Prescott. “And maybe,
when I’m done, I’ll go back down to the basement and finish what I
started on Mark while you run around up here trying to find a way
out.”

She shifted her feet again.

“And when I’m done with that, I will
come and I will find you, and I will make the rest of our time
together very . . . unpleasant.”

“And if I come with you?”

“Then we can end this much quicker. For
you, that would be preferable.”

She took a couple of steps towards him,
but couldn’t bring herself any nearer. He raised the cane and
placed it on her shoulder, turning it so that the slightly curved
dragon head pulled her in so that the gun rested against her chest.
His smile grew wider, and she was close enough to see the almost
dried blood seep out of his wounds.

“Silly girl.”

He pulled the trigger, and the sudden
snap of metal made her jump.

“It’s empty,” he said, dropping the gun
and taking her arm with his free hand. “Let’s go get
re-acquainted.”

He marched her down the steps, a hand
on her arm and the cane resting on her shoulder. When they got to
the bottom of the stairs she saw Mark lying face down in front of
the furnace and just outside the pool of Steve’s blood. Jack walked
her forward until she was standing only a few feet away from the
open furnace door and Mark’s prone form. She waited for a sign that
Mark was still alive and that she hadn’t been tricked again, and
after a few seconds he drew in a short, shallow breath.

“Arms up,” he said. She complied, and
she felt her wrists brush against rusted metal. She looked up and
saw a length of chain dangling down from one of the metal
crossbars. Jack’s corpse reached up and wound the chain around her
wrists until it was painfully tight.

“Don’t even breathe.” He slid the blade
from the cane and dropped the sheath on the floor. Holding the tip
of the blade on her neck, he stepped back and leaned down to fish
something out of Mark’s jacket pocket. He pulled something out and
stood back up, reaching for the chain on her wrists
again.

She looked up just in time to see the
padlock click into place.

“There we go. Now we can really get
some work done.”

He turned away from her to look down at
Mark. “Time to wake up, little traitor. I want you to get a good
look at what you’ve done.”

“He didn’t do anything!” she said,
tugging at the chain. For all the age it showed, it was strong, not
giving at all even with her full weight on it.

“You have no idea,” Jack said, turning
back to her. “This is all his fault. Everything that I’ve done has
been because of him, and now he’s going to suffer for turning his
back on us.”

“Wake up,” he said, turning back to
Mark and giving him a kick in the ribs. Mark groaned and turned
away from him.

“Oh, no you don’t,” Jack said, leaning
down and turning Mark over to face him. “I want you awake for this.
I want you to get a good look at this and see that there is no
escape. Not for her, not for the Detective, and certainly not for
you.”

“Look at this,” Mark said, thrusting
the sheath of the cane up and into the hole in Jack’s head. With a
yell Mark pulled, toppling Jack’s corpse headfirst into the
furnace.

Jack gave a surprised howl of anger,
his legs sticking out from the furnace chamber and kicking wildly.
Mark slapped away at them until he got a good grip and forced them
into the fire. The fire roared out from around Jack’s squirming and
thrashing body that just barely fit into the fuel chamber. He was
trying to turn himself around, and Mark ducked out of the way as
the sword blade stabbed out from the flames at him.

“The door!” Christine screamed. “Shut
the door!”

Mark swung the door shut as hard as he
could. It landed on Jack’s flaming wrist with a loud snap, the
impact forcing him to drop the blade. Jack’s body pushed against
the door, almost knocking Mark onto his back.

Mark braced his shoulder on the door
and planted his feet as much as he could on the blood-slicked
cement floor. Blackened fingers peeked around the edge of the door
amidst the smoke and fire escaping into the air. Mark pressed his
back against the door as hard as he could and forced it shut. He’d
managed to find a tiny patch of the floor that wasn’t wet, but it
was almost too far away to be of any help.

Mark turned to look through the
chamber’s window and found himself eye to boiling, flaming eye with
Jack. The Darren-smoke swirled around the chamber, almost blacking
out the flames behind it. Even through the glass he could hear
Darren’s scream of anger and the hiss of the flames as they burned
away not just as Jack’s body, but the smoke that had been Jack’s
form.

Mark reached over to latch the furnace
door shut, but there was nothing there. All that was left of the
locking mechanism was two loops of metal. Jack’s body pushed
against the door again, and Mark could see a tiny tendril of black
smoke escape from the gap that had been made before Mark forced the
door shut again.

“Fuck, it won’t latch!” he yelled,
looking back at Christine. She was swinging her legs at him and
pulling at the chain on her wrists.

“The sword! Use the sword!” she said,
and he realized that she had been kicking it towards him with each
swing of her legs.

He stretched out, keeping one arm
pressed against the door and the other reaching out for the sword
handle. Christine swung again, kicking the blade up against the
tips of his fingers. He managed to get a fingernail hooked into a
bit of the detail work on the dragon head and dragged the thing
fully in his grip.

Twisting around, Mark jammed the blade
through the metal loops all the way down to the hilt. The door
rattled as Mark got up and made sure the blade wouldn’t shake
loose. The door shook, but not enough to open a crack even big
enough for smoke to get through. On his knees in front of the
window, catching his breath, Mark watched the flames and the
darkness swirling in them. The roars of anger had been replaced
with a high pitched squeal, and the furnace was shaking as the
power of the flames grew.

It’s eating him. Whatever is
in there is so blind with hunger it’s devouring whatever power it
had given him. Not too shabby, kiddo. I’m going to take back some
of the things I said about you.

“Is he . . ?” she asked, looking over
his shoulder at the tiny window.

“Yeah,” Mark said, getting to his feet
and wiping his hands. He walked over to the gauge on the furnace
and turned all of the dials up as far as they could go. “But let’s
make sure that bastard cooks.” Looking over the various levers and
knobs, he had a twinge of memory. It was someone explaining to him
how the furnace worked, and reminding him that he had to make sure
that the valves on all the pipes leading up into the house were
open if the heat was going to come through.

The furnace is very old,
Justin, and has a lot of quirks to it. It’ll be sure to keep us
warm, though. Lord knows it can burn hotter than any other thing
I’ve seen.

Mark reached up, shutting each valve
and making sure that whatever was left of Darren was trapped in the
furnace until he burned away into nothingness. The furnace rumbled
again, vibrating with the intensity of the heat now trapped in its
chamber.

“Mark?” Christine said, bringing him
back to his senses.

“What?” He said, turning back to face
her.

She jangled the chains around her
wrists. “A little help?”

“Oh,” he said, running over and peering
at the twisted knot of chain and lock. “Geez, it’s
padlocked.”

“I know,” she said. “He got it from
your jacket. Is there a key?”

“No,” Mark said, squinting up at it.
“Jesus! This is my lock from junior high. Where the hell did he
find this?”

“What’s the combination?”

“I . . . oh, shit,” he mumbled. “36 . .
. 24 . . . I dunno, 36, maybe.”

“Mark!” she yelled. “That’s from a
song! Can’t you remember?”

“I’m sorry!” he yelled back. “I’ve
taken a couple of blows to the head in case you haven’t noticed,
and the yelling isn’t doing anything for the ringing in my
ears!”

“Jesus, I’m sorry, okay? Can you pull
it, without tearing off my wrists? I think I might’ve weakened
it.”

“I’ll try.”

He pulled at it until he was almost
purple in the face. There was a slight bend in the bar above, but
that was it. He tried again, this time pulling himself off his feet
and hanging in the air. Again, nothing.

“Ow, ow, ow!” she said, wincing as it
tightened the chain around her wrists.

“Sorry,” he said. “I’m going to try to
fin--” he started, but then furnace exploded.