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

“Well, it’s rather miraculous,” Eliza said. “I started
improving last night, and this morning they discharged me. Said they’d never
seen such a rapid recovery. I’m feeling a thousand percent better.”

“Oh, that is good news,” Roy said, but not with his usual
enthusiasm.

“What’s wrong?” Eliza said. “Something’s wrong.”

“Eliza…” Steven started, but he couldn’t summon the words.

“Tell me,” Eliza insisted.

“We’re on our way to Eximere,” Roy said. “Something’s
happened to Jason, and…”

“Yes?” Eliza asked. “What happened to Jason?”

“…we’re going to bury him there,” Roy finished.

“Oh my god,” Eliza said. “Oh my god.”

Steven and Roy didn’t say anything more, unsure of what to
add.

“What happened?” Eliza asked.

“We…” Roy started.

“Eliza, we…” Steven tried to continue.

“I’m on the next plane,” Eliza said. “Will the two of you
wait for me? Wait there at Eximere, until I can get there?”

“Sure,” Steven said. “We’ll wait for you.” The idea of Eliza
joining them during their time of grief seemed comforting to him. He was glad
she was so willing to drop everything and come up.

“I’ll rent a car at the airport,” she said, “and be out to
Eximere as soon as I can get there.”

“Alright,” Steven said. “Thank you.” He hung up.

“I’m glad she’s coming,” Roy said.

“Me too,” Steven replied.

Neither of them had touched their coffee. They settled back
into the wordless silence that had preceded Eliza’s call, the sound of the road
a numbing soundtrack to their thoughts.

◊

“How horrible,” Eliza said, as Steven finished recounting the
tale. He was on his fourth drink and was beginning to slur his words. Roy was
right behind him.

In the distance, under the banyan tree in the back yard at
Eximere, a fresh mound of dirt covered Jason’s body, now resting silently near
the other gifteds, the only one with a normal grave. Steven and Roy had spent
hours sitting next to it after they finished with the sad task of interring the
body. Now they were on the back porch with Eliza, filling her in on what had
happened.

“So my illness was brought on by Aka Manah,” Eliza said.
“That explains why the doctors were so baffled. And the quick recovery.”

“The deal is over now, so fuck it,” Steven said. “I’m going
to tell you what the agreement was. Between me and him.”

“Are you sure you want to do that?” Eliza asked. “Weren’t the
terms of the deal that you’d keep it secret?”

“Fuck it,” Steven said, swinging his glass a little and
spilling some of his drink. “He changed the terms on me. Plus he wasn’t even
after the Agimat anyway. And the deal is done now. So I consider myself
released from the agreement.”

“What do you mean he wasn’t after the Agimat?” Roy asked.

“OK,” Steven said. “So, the deal all started because of the
planchette. You remember, the one we found in the object room?”

“Yes,” Roy said. “The one that exposed the marks on your
hands.”

“Yes,” Steven said. “He claimed it was his, and he wanted it
back. He wanted to know where I got it from, but I wouldn’t tell him.
Apparently, he can’t detect things down here. So he had a bunch of other things
he wanted back, things he claimed were stolen from him over the years. He
threatened both of you, hanging your bodies in the suicide forest. I don’t suppose
you remember that?”

“Hanging?” Eliza asked. “Literally?”

“Yes,” Steven continued, “he had your bodies hanging in the
trees as a way to scare me into agreeing to his terms. He gave me a list of
items. I told him I’d look for them, and if I found them, I’d return them to
him. He showed up in California, along the freeway, when we were driving back
from Nevada. Do you remember that?”

“No, I don’t,” Roy said.

“He made you both pass out while he talked to me,” Steven said.
“Threatened you again, made you gasp for air. He wanted me to speed up the
search. Then we got home, and apparently I still wasn’t moving fast enough for
him, because he showed up here on Friday, threatening you, Eliza. Telling me
you’d be ill until I got the job done. So Roy and I went out to Eximere, and I
went through all of the objects, comparing them to his list. It took all night.
There were maybe a dozen or so I brought back that night, to give to him the
next morning. The Agimat was one of them, but it disappeared sometime between
my leaving Eximere with it, and the demon inspecting the boxes of objects at my
house the next morning. He said the Agimat had reverted to its previous owner.
Apparently this happened because it was removed from the protection of
Eximere.”

“It was recharging during this period,” Roy said. “Between
Good Friday and Easter. So it was powerful. Perhaps that’s why the demon wanted
it back now, with this sudden deadline.”

“But the bastard’s a liar,” Steven said, slurring his words
even more. “When I gave him the fucking thing, all he wanted to know was where
the man was buried.”

“The man?” Eliza asked.

“The man who had the Agimat,” Steven said. “The one who
killed his family with the ax. He was trying to be coy, but I knew what he
really wanted. He wanted to know where the man’s body was. I told him it was in
the pit with the others, and he was pissed. Then he blipped out. Gone. I’m done
with him and glad of it.”

“So what he really wanted was something else?” Roy asked.
“Not the Agimat?”

“That’s what I think,” Steven said. “He may have had some
interest in the Agimat, but he wouldn’t stop torturing you, Eliza, until I told
him where the man’s body was. It seemed to me that was his real goal.”

“Bastard,” Roy said. “Instead of telling us what he wants, the
fucker puts us on a goose chase, and we lose Jason because of it. We could have
walked out of there after the first trance and told him the body was buried in
that pit. If we really didn’t need to get that object, Jason would still be
alive.”

Steven seemed to go catatonic. He felt like he wanted to cry
again, but he’d been crying all day, and the tears wouldn’t come. He was dried
out.

“Some Easter this was,” Eliza said. “Supposed to be a day
about life.” She stood up. “It’s late. I’m going to bed, and I suggest you do,
too. I brought lots of extra food with me. We don’t have to rush back to town. We’ll
stay here tomorrow. With Jason.”

Steven stared out over the porch railing into the back yard
as Eliza and Roy left. The little lights near the ground in the yard,
illuminating the path to the tree, cast enough light that the large banyan was
filled with shadows. A slight breeze caused the branches to sway lightly,
waving silently over Jason’s grave, which Steven could see clearly from where
he was sitting. He started crying again, unable to stop himself.
Sleep well,
Jason,
Steven thought, as he rose to his feet and walked into the house.
Sleep
well.

Sleeping at Eximere was like sleeping at the most quiet,
relaxing resort in the world. It was so well built you couldn’t hear a sound,
especially the loud snoring of Steven and Roy. When the light returned, it was
a natural alarm clock, rousing Eliza and Roy. The only thing missing was the
sound of birds chirping.

When Eliza stumbled into the kitchen, she found Roy pouring
himself a cup of coffee from a pot he’d just made.

“You want some of this?” Roy asked.

“I do,” Eliza said, sliding onto a stool at the counter. Roy
removed a mug from the cabinets and poured her a cup.

“Steven?” Eliza asked.

“Still asleep,” Roy said. “And I hope he sleeps as long as he
can.”

“Me too. I’m surprised you’re up. It’s been a hard couple of
days for you, too.”

“Couldn’t sleep. Too many things bothering me.”

“I know, I can’t imagine losing a son or a grandson.
Especially like this. He blames himself.”

“I know, but I can’t see where he had much of a choice with
the demon. As for the incident at Diablo, well, I kind of blame myself for
that.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way Roy, but you realize all this
blame and guilt doesn’t help anything, right? The only way you wouldn’t have
been wrapped up with the demon was to have not returned that book to June in
the first place. And returning these stolen books is a perfectly fine and
admirable thing to do.”

Roy sipped his coffee while he listened to her. She was
right, but it didn’t ease the pain very much.

“Well, I appreciate your words Eliza, I do. But I don’t think
they’ll help Steven very much. He believes he killed Jason. That’ll never stop
eating at him until the day he dies. Maybe not even after that.”

“Are we sure that’s what happened?” Eliza asked, setting her
coffee down. “It’s not like an autopsy was done on Jason, to know what he died
from. Steven had this dream of killing him, and he wakes up next to him. You
didn’t see him kill Jason, did you?”

“No,” Roy said.

They sat in silence for a few minutes. Eliza considered a
couple of other things to say, but she decided against saying them. One of the
reasons she rushed up to visit them was to offer comfort and support, but
sometimes it was best to just let things sit.

“That’s not all of it, though,” Roy said. “There’s more
that’s bothering me.”

“Like?”

“Like, why didn’t the demon go get the Agimat himself? Why
did he force Steven to go get it? Presumably the demon can hunt down and
recover lost or stolen objects on his own; the only reason he roped Steven into
this deal was to get at objects hidden away here, in Eximere, that he couldn’t
find but he knew Steven had access to.”

“True,” Eliza said.

“And if he really was the original owner of the Agimat, he
would have known that it would revert to its previous owner the second it came
out of Eximere. Maybe he already knew all about what happened at Diablo.”

“Then you’d think he’d be able to figure out about the pit,”
Eliza said. “He could have observed the same ghost cycle you watched up there.
He wouldn’t have needed Steven to tell him the bodies were buried there.”

“As much as I hate to say it,” Roy said, rising to pour
himself a warmer, “I think we need to go back to that old biddy in Gig Harbor.
She might be able to shed some light on all of this, especially now that the
terms of the deal are out in the open.”

“What was her name?”

“Judith,” Roy answered. “Judith Duke. I don’t relish visiting
her, believe me. She seems crazier than a shit house rat. But she might have
some answers.”

“Should we go today?”

“No. Let’s spend the day here. Maybe stay tonight, too. We’d
both benefit from just taking a day off. I don’t think he wants to leave Jason
just yet, and honestly, neither do I. But when we leave, I’m going to suggest a
detour on the way home, to see her.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

“What will you do with your day?”

“Oh, explore around a bit. I’ve not had as much time here as
you two. Do you suppose Kent Percival is still upstairs, keeping guard on the
house?”

“I would think so. Haven’t heard a word from him since we set
the whole thing up.”

“And what are you going to do today?” Eliza asked.

“I guess what I always do,” Roy answered. “Go through books
in the library, see if I can figure out who they belong to. It’ll take my mind
off Jason, at least.”

Roy paused. He didn’t like what he’d just said.

“That came out wrong,” he said. “I don’t really want to take
my mind off Jason.”

“Just let today be whatever it is,” Eliza said. “Don’t force
it.”

“I’m glad you’re here,” Roy said, smiling at her. “I think
the day we met you was a rare day.”

She reached across the kitchen counter, extending her hand.
Roy took it. “I feel the same way. Both you and Steven mean a lot to me.”

Roy held her hand for a moment, then let it go. He walked out
of the kitchen and to the library, where he settled into a large padded chair.
He sat his coffee down on the small table next to him, and opened a book from
the stack he selected earlier. Then he promptly fell asleep.

◊

Many hours later, Eliza wandered into the library. Roy was
gone, but the entrance to the stairway that led to the lower level was exposed.
She walked down the stairs and through the door at the bottom, emerging into
the large workspace of James Unser. She saw Steven walking among the work
tables, inspecting the projects. She walked over to him.

“You know,” Steven said as she approached, “I didn’t even
think to check down here for objects for Aka Manah. But this room is full of
them.”

“They’re all in use, though,” Eliza said. “You don’t know
what might happen if you were to remove one. Like this one, here.” She pointed
to a project on the table next to them. A flat, thin piece of wood about a foot
square was covered with a green moss. Above it, a contraption was rigged to
drip a single drop of yellow liquid onto the exact center of the moss every
minute or so. A collector pan under the moss was gathering a brownish liquid
that ran from it, and recycling it back up through several bottles until it fed
the tube delivering the drop of yellow liquid.

“What’s going on here?” she asked. “Do we dare take it apart,
stop what it’s doing?”

“It looks to me like it’s concentrating something,” Steven
answered, examining it more closely. “The liquid. Becoming more and more
concentrated. Or refined.”

“Wonder what the liquid does,” Eliza said. “Wish there were
some way to know.”

She left Steven and began wandering along the tables, looking
at the other projects.

“Roy would like to stop and see Judith, on the way back
tomorrow,” Eliza said, still browsing the items. “Thinks that if you tell her
the details of the deal, she might be able to explain a few things.”

“I don’t need her to tell me I killed my son,” Steven said,
leaving the moss and moving to the next project on an adjacent table.

“I’ll let him explain it,” Eliza said. “But I hope you’ll
hear him out.”

“Always do,” Steven said. They browsed for a few moments
more, then Steven spoke up. “You know, he was not sleeping when I did it. He
was awake, looking at me. He tried to save himself, he tried to roll off the
bed, out of the way of my ax.”

“You weren’t holding an ax, Steven,” Eliza said. “That was a
dream.”

“I know I didn’t kill him with that ax, I killed him some
other way. But he tried to save himself, and couldn’t. The ghost there with me,
the one that possessed me – he was stopping Jason from moving by saying
something. A word. He kept repeating it, and it was holding Jason in place so I
could kill him.”

“Have you told Roy about this?”

“No.”

“Well, I think you should. He’s trying very hard to sort
things out.”

“There’s nothing to sort out. The deal with Aka Manah is
done, and Jason is dead. I’ll have to live with that for the rest of my life.
Time to find the next book to return.”

“I think there are some questions still,” Eliza said, working
her way back to Steven. “Things may not be completely over yet. I think Roy
won’t have any closure until those things get figured out.”

“I can’t tell you how many times last night I wanted to come
down here and find an object that I could use to kill myself,” Steven said. “That’d
be some closure.”

Eliza walked up to him and put her hand on his back. “That
would destroy your father,” she said. “And it’s not what Jason would have
wanted.”

Steven began to cry again, and Eliza wrapped her arms around
him. “Jason was a good kid, wasn’t he?” she asked, after he had a moment. She
let him go.

“Always a good kid,” Steven said, composing himself. “Never
in trouble. You see so many kids who lose track of themselves. He was never
like that. God, his mother is going to be devastated. And it’ll drag on and on,
because she’ll think it’s a missing persons case.”

“Listen to Roy when he talks to you, OK? As a favor to me? I
think what he’s worried about makes sense.”

“Alright,” Steven said. “I’ll go to Judith’s. Why not.” He
began pacing around the room once more, studying the objects, trying to divert
his mind.