The Diablo Horror (The River Book 7) (6 page)

He could see Jason below him. Jason’s eyes went wide at the
sight of the ax. He knew Jason wanted to raise his hands to defend himself, but
something was stopping him. Jason wanted to roll off the bed, get out of the
way of the weapon, but he couldn’t move. Steven looked again at the man to his
left – he was controlling Jason somehow, keeping him immobile for the attack.
Not in the same way that he was possessing Steven – no, it was different.
He
couldn’t possibly possess us both
at the same time,
Steven thought.
He’s
gained control of me, but how is he stopping Jason?

Steven listened. The man to his left was repeating a word,
over and over, softly. Every time he said it, Jason would freeze for a moment.
Then he’d start to move again, and the man’s word would cause him to stop
again. Somehow he was holding Jason down, using something inside Jason to keep
him still, like a lamb on an altar.

Steven raised the ax, trying to resist.
Once the ax comes
down, the Agimat will heal Jason back to life. And God will be so, so pleased. My
wife will love me again, and respect me, as she should. The people at church will
marvel at the miracle of my faith. This test will prove to them all that I am
worthy, that God really loves me, loves them. This is his will, because I know
I must do it, and with him, all things are possible. Like Abraham and Isaac. A
test, and I shall pass.
Now he was convinced. He was no longer resisting.
He mustered all of his righteous energy, putting all of his strength and
the strength of God into the swing.

Then he brought the ax down.

Roy slapped Steven’s face repeatedly. Steven, lying on the
floor, rolled away from Roy, trying to avoid the slaps.

“Wake up!” Roy was shouting. “Wake up!”

As Steven came to his senses, he remembered the dream. He was
relieved it was over. Roy was still slapping him. “Dad?” he said. “Stop it.”

“What have you done?” Roy yelled, still slapping at his face.
“What the fuck have you done?”

Steven raised himself up on one elbow. He was expecting to
find himself on the couch, where he’d fallen asleep, but instead he was on the
floor, a dirty brown carpet pressed against his skin. As he turned his head, he
could see under a bed. There were small children’s toys under it. A ball, a
G.I. Joe.

He began to fill with dread. Roy stopped slapping him and
backed away. Steven could tell Roy was upset. He was wiping tears from his
face, looking at the bed next to him.

Steven raised himself up more, his line of sight coming up
from under the bed to the side of the bed. He was afraid to see what might be
on top of it. He stood up slowly and looked down. Jason was lying on the bed,
face up. The skin of his face was white.

“I should have never left you two alone,” Roy said. “Deem
warned me. I shouldn’t have left you alone.”

Steven bent over Jason, shaking him. “Jason! Wake up!”

“He’s got no pulse, son.”

Steven felt for a pulse, horrified at how cold Jason’s wrist
felt in his hand. He could tell Jason wasn’t breathing. A wild swirl of
emotions began in his stomach and started to rise up to his chest. It reached
his throat, and he felt as though he might throw up. He shook Jason again.
Jason didn’t respond.

“He’s dead!” Roy repeated. “He’s been gone for a while. Stop
shaking him.”

Steven turned to look at Roy. He was confused, angry,
disbelieving. “How can he be dead?”

“I don’t know,” Roy said. “You tell me.”

This is a dream, too,
Steven thought.
I need to wake up.

He examined Jason’s body. He couldn’t see any marks, any
blood. “But how?” Steven said, the emotion rising in his voice, the confusion
and anger and disbelief turning into grief.
I know how he died,
Steven
thought.
I know.

Steven started pressing on Jason’s chest, performing CPR. He opened
Jason’s mouth, checking for blockages, and blew into his lungs, repeating the steps
he’d learned in a class at work. He kept at it for several minutes, checking
for a pulse but finding none.

Roy turned away from Steven. “Fuck you and this demon!” he
said, storming out of the room. He walked into the living room and thought
about walking outside, but then changed his mind. Instead, he sat down on the
couch in the living room and began to cry.

Steven stopped the CPR, and examined Jason again. He could
tell Jason was gone, and had been long before he’d risen up off the floor. Seeing
Jason’s body lying still in front of him seemed so wrong, so sudden.
The ax
man,
he thought.
He gave me the ax. I held it, I swung it at him. I
killed him.

Steven staggered into the hallway and stopped when he reached
the living room. He saw Roy sitting on the couch.

“I killed him,” Steven said, almost not believing the words
that came out of his mouth.

“You wouldn’t kill your own son,” Roy said through his tears.

“I thought I was dreaming,” Steven said. “The man with the
ax, I was forced to follow him. He made me…”

Steven stopped, unable to finish.

“Here’s your fucking Agimat,” Roy said, tossing the object
toward Steven. It landed at his feet. “Hope it was worth it.”

“What did you see?” Steven asked. “Tell me what you saw.”

“When I came in, I found the ax man in the living room. I
shot him with the EM gun, which worked, by the way, at least long enough for me
to take the Agimat off him. The moment I did, he disappeared. Without it he
didn’t have enough energy to manifest. Then I found you and Jason in the
bedroom. I noticed he wasn’t breathing. I felt for a pulse, but there was none.
Then I woke you up. That’s the whole fucking story.”

Steven turned to walk back down the hallway. He went into the
bedroom, hoping that as he walked in, he’d find Jason still sleeping, and he’d
wake him up so they could go back to Seattle.

He stepped up to the bed and sat down next to Jason’s body.
Then he picked him up and held him. He touched Jason’s head, and he felt the
cold skin. That’s when he felt something rip inside him, and he started to cry.

Oh god,
he thought.
He’s dead. He’s really dead.

◊

“Are you sure you’re OK to drive?” Roy asked.

“No, I’m not sure about anything,” Steven said. They had
loaded Jason’s body into the back seat of the car and covered him with a
blanket, then closed up the house and headed home. They decided to return the
keys to Brett later, along with the news that he could safely return to Diablo.
For now, Steven’s only thoughts were about Jason. That, and the meeting he was
about to have with Aka Manah.

“I killed him, Dad,” Steven said, feeling numb. “In the
dream, the ax man’s thoughts were in my head. I was thinking like him. He
handed me the ax, and it seemed like the right thing to do. I deserve to be in
jail. I deserve to be dead.”

“You weren’t in your right state of mind,” Roy said. “You
realize we can’t turn Jason over to a mortuary. There would be questions. We
have to… take care of him ourselves.”

“I should be charged,” Steven said. “Charged, tried, and
incarcerated.”

“You killed him in a dream, a dream you were forced to have,”
Roy said. “We still don’t know how he actually died.”

“Doesn’t matter. I know what I did.”

“You know what the ghost wanted you to believe.”

“That’s no ghost in the back seat, Dad. He’s gone.” Steven
began crying again, wiping the tears from his face with the back of his hand.

“I hate to say this, but we have to bury him, somewhere. And soon.”

“It’s not fair. It’s not right. I don’t want him buried
someplace out in a forest, some anonymous grave to hide what I did.”

“Well,” Roy said, “why don’t we bury him somewhere beautiful,
then? Like under the banyan tree at Eximere? Next to Thomas, his ancestor?”

As Steven thought of this, he felt a small fraction of his
anguish peel off. They had never been able to show Eximere to Jason while he
was alive, but it was the perfect place for him to rest. Private, beautiful,
and somehow appropriate for a gifted.

“Alright,” Steven said. “Eliza will have to know the truth,
if he’s going to rest there.”

“We’ll tell her,” Roy said. “We’ll have to. She’ll
understand. She’s been involved with Eximere and the demon from the beginning.”

“Are we going to tell her I killed him?”

“I’ll leave that in your hands to decide.”

“What about the rest of the world? Jason becomes a missing
person?”

“I can’t see any other way. Let them discover him missing at
his apartment. When the investigations start, we’ll have to say we never saw
him.”

Steven broke down crying again. “I loved him,” he said,
trying to drive with tears streaming down his face.

Roy reached over and grabbed Steven’s shoulder, a rare
display of physical affection. “I did too,” he said, giving his shoulder a pat.
“I did too.”

◊

“So you dropped the old man at home so we could have some
alone time,” the man said as he sat on a chair in Steven’s living room.

“I assume you know what happened,” Steven said, walking to a
closet and hanging up his coat.

“I know there’s a dead body in your car downstairs,” the man
said. “So it didn’t go as well as it might have.”

“My son is dead,” Steven said, turning to face the man, the
representation of Aka Manah. “All for your goddamn prize. Well, here it is,
motherfucker. Take it and leave. We’re done.” He tossed the Agimat onto the
coffee table next to the demon.

The man rose and lifted the object. “Ah!” he said, examining
it. “It’s been a long time. Hundreds of years. Tell me, who had it?”

“What the fuck do you care? You’ve got it now, so go.
Remember the deal? Eliza better be home from the hospital and feeling fine
before I wake up in the morning. And for the record, I hate you. I’ll hate you
to my dying day.”

“Who had it? I want to know.”

“Some religious fanatic who thought it would resurrect all of
his family after he butchered them.”

“Where is he now?”

“Who the fuck knows? Get out!”

“I want to know. Tell me. Give me his name at least.”

“Why does it matter? You have it, just leave me alone.”

Steven looked at the man, holding the Agimat. It looked like
he was examining it intently, but it occurred to Steven that the close
attention he was giving the object was masking something else, trying to cover
his real intention.

“I want to know who had it. It matters to me.”

“I don’t know his name. He killed his family, then he killed
himself.”

“Do you know where he’s buried?”

Steven stopped.
This is what the demon really wants,
he thought.
Not the Agimat. He wants the man’s body who owned the Agimat.
Fucker.

“Why?” Steven asked. “Why would you want to know that?”

“I want to grind up his bones for stealing it from me,” the
man replied unconvincingly.

“If you want to know, go up there and search yourself,”
Steven said.

“Tell me, or your friend in California won’t be recovering.”

Steven had just gone through the worst day of his life, and
it wasn’t getting any better. He wanted it to end.

“He threw himself into the same hole he dumped his family’s
bodies into,” Steven spat at the man. “That’s where he’s at, rotting at the
bottom of a pit a mile or so from Diablo.”

“Downstream?”

Why the fuck would he care?
Steven wondered. “Yes, downstream from the dam.”

Steven watched as the man’s expression turned angry and
frustrated. Then he disappeared, along with the Agimat.

Steven stared at the space where the demon had stood.
Is
it over?
he wondered.
Was that it?

He walked through the rest of the house, checking on things.
Roy had told him to leave Jason’s body in the car, covered in a blanket, rather
than bring him inside and risk being seen. It was killing him to follow Roy’s
advice, knowing Jason was alone down there. Tomorrow morning they were going to
drive out to Eximere and bury him. Meanwhile, the temperature outside was cold
enough to keep Jason’s body refrigerated.

It felt so wrong to leave Jason in the car, so disrespectful
– but Steven knew Roy was right. He wondered if he should eat, realizing he
hadn’t eaten anything for hours, but he wasn’t hungry. He felt like he might
never eat again. Numbly, he slipped into his normal evening routine, shutting
up the house, setting the alarm, and getting ready for bed.

As he slipped under the covers, he prayed to fall asleep, to
not lie up thinking over the horrific details of the day. But sleep did not
come quickly.

 
The last time I fell asleep,
he thought,
I killed
my son.
He felt another wave of guilt and pain pass through him, making him
curl up into a fetal position.

How can a ghost be that powerful?
Steven wondered.
They seem so
stupid, this one especially. Roy had always said they could be dangerous, and
now I really know what he meant. The Agimat. The goddamn Agimat gave him enough
power to make his stupid dangerous.

How did he die?
he wondered.
Not an ax. That was the ax man’s method,
there was no real ax around. He’d tricked Brett into using his shotgun, but
Brett had already been carrying the gun. I wasn’t carrying anything. If I had
strangled him with my hands, there would have been bruises on his neck.

How did he die?

Steven felt a pulsing in his palms, but the tears began to
flow once again, and his body heaved with sobs, slowly rocking himself. Sleep
came gradually, temporarily overcoming the pain.

◊

The drive out to the peninsula had been long and quiet.
They’d stopped for coffee since neither of them had felt like making any.
Neither had eaten any breakfast, either. They weren’t hungry. Every time Steven
thought of something to say, he stopped himself. Nothing seemed appropriate,
and he wasn’t sure he’d be able to speak without crying, anyway.

Steven received a call as they passed Olympia. It was from
Eliza. He put her on speakerphone and they both listened.