The Devil's Dream: Book One (14 page)

He nodded. "Yeah,
I figured. I just needed to hear you."

"If you stop right
now, Matt, I'll talk to you every day until the day you die. If you
disappear, I'll call you whenever you want and talk as long as you
want. Just don't do what you're about to do. Please."

"Ral, come see me.
Just for a day. I'll tell you where I'm at and you come on down and
just spend the day with me. I'll give you twenty-four hours to
convince me to stop and I promise I'll listen with an open mind."

"And not tell
anyone where you're at, of course? You know they heard that right
now. You want me to agree to it on the phone? Don't be stupid."

"I don't care how
you answer as long as you come down here. If they knew how to catch
me, they wouldn't have ever lost me. If you say you'll come, I'll
find a way to get you here."

Rally didn't answer,
leading to the longest silence yet. He was begging his ex-wife to
come see him while the F.B.I. listened. He was forgetting about
Hilman, this addiction to Rally was jeopardizing his son's chances of
ever coming back. This addiction,
her
,
was as severe as alcohol or heroin. He knew that this conversation
could kill him, could ruin everything, and still he stayed on the
phone.

"I'll think about
it."

"The whole day to
convince me not to do this, Ral."

"Shut up. There's
no convincing you, so don't condescend. I'll think about it."

The line through
Matthew's computer went dead and he remained with the headphones in
his ears, smiling. If he could see her for a day, he could go on for
another twenty years.

* * *

"You've listened
to the call?" Rally said into the phone.

A few hours had passed
since her talk with Matt. Hours spent discussing with her husband;
hours spent wondering how he would take what she told him.
I'll
think about it
, and she was too. Not for herself, but for
the cops who were desperately trying to find him. If she went there,
he would trust her completely, never for a second thinking she was in
on the trap. She'd always been honest with him before, honest in her
plans to help catch him—so why would she not be honest now? Why
wouldn't she take him up on his offer to try and pull him away? There
was no chance of stopping him and she had told him as much. She was
honest then. So maybe if he ignored that then it was his own fault.
Not hers.

Or maybe that was guilt
tugging at her conscience.

"Yes, Mrs. Allen.
Listened to it and have been waiting on your call," Agent Moore
said. "Thanks for doing that too, calling us."

"What do you want
me to do?" Rally asked.

"We've been
talking about that. There are a few options, but I want to know what
you feel comfortable doing?"

She felt comfortable
pouring a bath and lying in it. She felt comfortable moving to
another country and never having to deal with any of this again. She
felt comfortable with a nuke dropping on her right now and stopping
her from making this decision.

"We could keep you
safe if you went, I can guarantee that. It depends on how far you're
willing to go to help us." Moore asked again.

"I just can't
believe he would go for it."

"You heard him
though. He asked. Not you. He wouldn't be calling you down there to
hurt you, would he?"

"No. Not at all.
I'm all he has left."

"Then you have a
unique opportunity to keep others from dying, Mrs. Allen. How far are
you willing to go to do that?"

"What happens to
Matt if I go?" Rally asked. "Are you going to kill him?"

"We'll do
everything we can not to. That's not my job here. I want to apprehend
him. That's what I'm paid to do."

Rally paused, thinking
out her next words carefully, understanding that this all was being
recorded as well.

"No. That's not
going to work. If I go to wherever he is, he can't make it out
alive."

Joe Welch opened his
eyes feeling like he had never done it before. Light blinded him as
if the sun burned in the middle of the ceiling instead of a few light
bulbs. He tried to raise his arms to his eyes to partially block out
the blinding brightness, but his arms wouldn't move. He tried harder,
keeping his eyes closed against the light. His arms still didn't
budge and he finally opened his eyes.

"Welcome back,
Joe," a voice to his left said.

His eyes moved from the
duct tape on his arms to the voice, panic rising with every passing
second. The man standing to his left, the one speaking, was a ghost.
Not human, but something from the ether that had somehow made its way
into reality. A bald head, as white as the underside of a sting ray.
His eyes were a pale blue, like a dead angel. His body so thin that
he couldn't have tied Joe to this easy chair. He couldn't even have
pulled the tape from the roll, let alone held Joe down while he did
his business.

Joe watched as the man
walked to his chair, watched as the man's hand pulled back, and then
felt the world around him explode. The slap sounded off into the room
around him and he heard Patricia cry from somewhere.

"Focus, Joe. Focus
now. I want you to be awake for a few minutes."

I'm
here! I'm focused!
His mind screamed at the apparition.

All that came from his
mouth was, "Mmhea. Mmfohusd." The tape across his mouth
blocked any sense someone might have made out of his words.

"No need to speak.
I know what you want to say and I'm going to make sure those cops
outside can't hear it."

Joe turned his head,
looking through a small crack in the blinds and seeing the police car
at its normal spot. Out there, not in here. Out there where there was
no goddamn apparition.

"HmmHaricia?"
Where's Patricia.

"Not too good at
listening, huh? I guess that might happen if you grow up without a
father. But I am going to need you to listen to me now, because I
want you to know exactly what is going to happen here, okay? Your
wife, if you turn your head as far as you possibly can to the right,
you might be able to see her. She's behind you, taped up the same to
a kitchen chair. Go ahead, give it a look."

Joe was already
turning, trying to turn his neck and body against the tape that felt
as strong as Superman's grip. He could see her, just like the
apparition said, see the silver tape around her mouth and her hair
hanging from her face. Her eyes were bloodshot and pleading with him,
begging him to get up and come over there, to save her from this.

"PHHHMMM."
Please.

"No, no. Let's not
beg. Not for her, not for you, and not for your child. Let's not do
that."

Jason.
Where was Jason?

The apparition walked
behind him and Joe did his best to turn and follow. The man grabbed
the chair Patricia sat on and dragged it across the wood paneled
floor.

"Your father took
all I had from me. My ex-wife turned me into the police. My son is
dead. Everything I had. You understand that right? He took it and
then got away with it. Well almost. I made sure no one got off
completely." He set the chair down about five feet in front of
Joe, where he and his wife could stare at each other. More tears
spilled from her eyes. "So, I'm going to take everything from
you, Joe. I haven't had any of what I lost returned to me. Not a
single thing. They even took my freedom and I finally just got that
back. So by taking from you, Joe, I'm going to begin to regain my
life. That's fair, right?"

Joe shook his head. He
wanted to speak, wanted to beg for this man's mercy. This apparition
who had lived in his dreams so many years ago, who had taken his own
father, and who Joe had been daring to show up here, was now touching
his wife's hair.

"I haven't felt my
lover's hair in fifteen years. You can't imagine what that's like."

Joe shook his head
harder, back and forth like a child telling his parents no.

"Jason is gone,
Joe. It's important for you to understand that. He's not dead, but
you'll never see him again. You will probably hear a lot about him on
the news, but that will be the closest you ever get to seeing your
child again. Your wife though, I'm going to let you see her as long
as you can possibly stand. Would you like that?"

Tears came now to Joe,
crying for the first time in years. Sweat was dripping off his head
despite that the fan spun above and the air conditioner pumped in
cool air. Still shaking his head, he struggled again, raging against
the tape that held him down. Grunts and caged screams came from his
taped mouth, but not a sound was heard outside of the living room.

"Go ahead.
Struggle all you want," Brand said, walking into the kitchen.

His wife's eyes opened
and looked at him, stopping him in his fit to get loose. He watched
as her fingers stretched out from beneath the tape and reached
towards him. She wouldn't ever be able to reach him, but she tried
anyway. Joe's tears flowed freely and he reached his own fingers out
to try and touch his wife.

"Alright, Joe. I
hope you're ready for this. I know I am."

Brand stepped in front
of Joe and his wife, blocking them off and forcing Joe to stare at
the apparition's back. He watched the man's arm jet forward.

Patricia screamed, and
the arm came back, then shot forward again.

Back and forth.

Back and forth.

His wife screaming
through that sticky, gray tape covering her mouth.

Brand moved away from
Joe's wife, revealing what he'd done.

Bloody holes stared out
at Joe. Holes that leaked blood down her shirt, down her breasts,
onto her legs and then fell beneath her chair. Her eyes were wide
open, staring out into the room but seeing nothing. He watched as her
upper body hitched, trying to gain air through the lungs that
suddenly had new openings in them. Her head twitched, up and down in
short motions like she was agreeing with something Joe had said, and
a low moan came through the tape. A raspy sound, like the moan was
being pulled across a rough patch of concrete.

His wife expired with
her blood pooling beneath her.

"There. Now I
won't take her away from you like they did me. You can sit here and
look at her until your heart's content. That's fair, right?"

The apparition left Joe
staring at his wife with eyes that would not stop crying and voice
box that didn't seem to work any longer.

* * *

Jeffrey watched as
Brand exited the house. He carried something bundled up in his arms,
carrying it against his body the same as one would a baby. The rest
of the house was still.

Jeffrey looked down at
his watch. Brand had been inside two hours and now left with
something he hadn't entered with. All the lights to the backyard were
turned off and the only real glimpses that Jeffrey caught of Brand
were revealed by the moon. On the front side of the street, the
marked police car sat silently. Sat and thought that by merely being
there they would scare off anyone thinking of entering the house.
Instead, a person entered and another person watched.

Jeffrey wasn't fooling
himself, this was the house of Joseph Welch. Except Welch wasn't the
one leaving the house. What had Brand done in there?

But that was a dumb
question, wasn't it?
He did
exactly what you thought he would. He came here and took his
vengeance while you watched.

Brand moved easily
across the lawn. Simply a man going on a stroll at three in the
morning, through a backyard that wasn't his, probably holding a child
that wasn't his. Jeffrey watched him open the backyard fence silently
and disappear into the woods behind the house. The police car out
front never moved.

Jeffrey waited another
ten minutes and then stood up. His shirt was covered with grass and
dirt, his back with leaves and twigs from the bush. He stood in the
yard like that for a long time, the moon shining down on him and the
sounds of insects coming from the woods. He waited on Brand to
return, to realize he had missed something, missed the person
watching him from the yard, and return to take care of him. No one
came though and Jeffrey finally realized he had to go inside to write
this book. He couldn't just think about it anymore; he needed to get
down to the blocking and tackling of it.

He walked across the
yard just as Matthew Brand had minutes ago. He pulled on the back
sliding door, doing his best to keep the thing quiet on its tracks.
He stepped into the house and felt the cool air touch his moist skin.
The house was silent like a grave. Jeffrey stood for a few seconds
looking around the kitchen. He finally moved, walking across the
kitchen and into the living room.

There he stopped and
stared.

A woman stared directly
at him, only she couldn't see him because he was dead. Her eyelids
remained half open and revealed glazed eyes. Five or six large, red
holes were drying on her chest. Her shirt hung in tatters revealing
the tan skin beneath. The tan skin and the open flesh that no longer
served its purpose of holding blood inside the body.

Jeffrey breathed
slowly, measured. If he let his breathing go, everything else went as
well. His heart rate would jack up and then any semblance of normalcy
he was holding onto would collapse and he would lose it right here in
the living room—would begin sobbing loud enough for the cops who
sat outside to finally come inside and work.

A man sat in a chair in
front of the woman. The body sagged forward, his weight straining
against tape that wrapped him like some kind of freak package. Dead
too.

Then the man's body
hitched with a sob and Jeffrey looked away. The man, Joseph Welch,
wasn't dead. His wife was and Joseph was staring at her. Had been
looking right at her ever since Brand pranced out of the house with
his new addition. There was one other person that should be in the
house, but Jeffrey didn't think he would find the little boy
anywhere. He turned down the hall, his feet making soft clicking
noises on the floor, but as he looked over his shoulder, only the
dead wife looked at him. The husband was lost, maybe forever.