The Influence (39 page)

“I don’t know why I should believe that,” Kevin said. “But you’re the straightest dude I know. And you bailed me out and were there for me when I needed it, so I owe you, Unc.” 

Ross smiled thinly. “Yes, you do.” 

“Honestly? I don’t think we’re gonna find what you say we’re gonna find out there, but I’ll go with you to check it out. And if it turns out that you need it…I’ll burn something for you. I’ll burn anything you need.” 

Ross didn’t like the way he said that. Not just the words but the tone made him uneasy, and he worried that he might be pushing his nephew back down the wrong path, like a person giving an alcoholic his first drink after a long stretch of sobriety. But he needed Kevin, and this was the only solution he could come up with that seemed like it might have even a slight chance to succeed.  

“I’m heading out tomorrow morning. Do you think you can be ready by six? You don’t have a job or anything you have to go to?” 

“No, dude, I’m cool. But isn’t six a little early?” 

“I’m hoping it’s not a little late.” 

Kevin nodded. “Okay. I’m in. You gonna pick me up here?” 

“Sure.” 

Kevin thought for a moment. “I may need to grab a few things up if we’re gonna do this.” 

“Do you need me to take you there?” 

“No, it’s all right. I have a couple of other…
errands
to run.” He smiled mysteriously, and Ross had the feeling he didn’t want to know what those “errands” were. “I’ll meet you here in the morning.” 

“Do you need anything from me?” Ross asked. “Matches or anything?” 

Kevin laughed. “Don’t worry, dude. I have it all covered.”
This might very well be the stupidest thing he’d ever done, Ross thought as he drove out of his nephew’s bad neighborhood toward a nicer area of the Valley where he could find a decent place to stay for the night. But at least he was doing something, and that alone made him feel better. Who was it who said all it took for evil to triumph was for good people to do nothing? He was out of that cycle now, he was acting, and if it turned out that he wasn’t part of the solution, at least he wasn’t part of the problem. 

At the motel, Ross tried for the millionth time to call Jill’s cell phone, receiving only the familiar busy signal. He tried their house, then called her parents, but no one answered in San Diego, and Jill’s mother refused to talk to him and hung up. 

Ross then called McDaniels, unsure if he would answer, unsure if he would still be in town— 

unsure if he would still be alive 

—but the handyman answered the phone on the first ring, almost as though he had been waiting for the call. Ross breathed an inward sight of relief. He explained to McDaniels that he and his nephew Kevin were coming to Magdalena in the morning and that Kevin was an expert in fire and arson. “We’re going to burn that thing up until it’s nothing but ashes, and then we’ll scatter those ashes to the wind. There won’t be a molecule left of it to harm a fly.” 

The other man didn’t sound convinced. “Cameron’s ranch is guarded. There’s no way you’ll be able to get to it. And don’t you think the angel’ll
know
that you’re comin’ and what you plan to do? If it don’t know already?” 

“I’m trusting my nephew,” Ross said. “Besides, I made it out there before. Jorge even opened the doors and showed it to us. I think…I think maybe it counts on being able to influence or control whoever comes near it, to kind of override the people it comes in contact with.” 

“Well, how you gonna make sure that don’t happen?” 

“Hatred,” Ross said. “That’ll keep me going.” 

“Well, there’s plenty a that to go around.” 

Ross didn’t respond. McDaniels’ questions had him worried. He hated to admit it, but almost none of the handyman’s qualms had occurred to him, and he wondered what else he might be missing. He was going off half-cocked here, not thinking things through, which was totally out of character. He was a planner, a details guy, an almost obsessively logical thinker. He wasn’t someone who just had an idea and, on the spur of the moment, acted on it. 

Maybe the monster
did
know he was coming. 

And was playing with him. 

“Is your friend still there?” Ross asked. “The sharpshooter?” 

“Far as I know.” 

“We may need him. You think he’d be willing to help us out?” 

McDaniels thought for a moment. “I don’t know, to be honest. We were gonna try and shoot it. But when we got there and saw it, all of us pussied out. Can’t say that won’t happen again.” 

“Do you think you can get him to try?” 

“I’ll give it a shot.” He let out a surprised chuckle. “A shot. That’s kind of a joke, ain’t it?” 

“Yeah,” Ross said. 

By his calculations, driving the maximum speed limit on the highway, ignoring the speed limit once he got on the road to Magdalena, he and Kevin should be there about nine or nine-thirty, ten at the very latest. He and McDaniels made arrangements to meet at the bar downtown, assuming it was safe, and by the side of the road at the edge of town if it was not; the determination to be made by the handyman, who promised to try and convince his friend Hec to come along. 

Ross hung up feeling more anxious than he had before he called. What until this moment he’d considered a pretty good plan was now looking more like a half-assed Hail Mary, and he wished he had more time to flesh out the details. But he thought of Jill, thought of Lita, thought of his Aunt Kate and everyone else whose innocent lives had been ended or overturned as a result of this monster, and he knew that he needed to act now. 

What was it that McDaniels had said?  

I think it’s ready to hatch. 

If he waited any longer, it might be too late, and he saw in his mind Jill’s final painting: that terrible demon standing amidst the smoldering ruins of Magdalena. 

He barely slept that night, and, wanting to get an even earlier start than originally planned, called Kevin at four-thirty in the morning to wake him up. But it turned out that Kevin was already awake for reasons of his own, and Ross picked him up shortly after five. They packed three boxes of mysterious materials in the trunk, grabbed some coffee and donuts from what might have been the last Winchell’s still in existence, and hit the highway, heading south.  

Kevin was a captive audience, and Ross filled him in on more details as they drove. He had several hours to argue his case, and while he realized how fantastical it all seemed, he did not get the impression that his nephew thought he was making it up out of whole cloth. Maybe Kevin didn’t believe all of it, but there was enough detail and specificity that at least some of it seemed to ring true. 

Or Kevin was starting to sense something himself. 

The road had been dirt for awhile now, and ahead on the horizon they could see the tips of the mountains that bordered the southern edge of town. Now that he was nearly there, Ross’ stomach tightened. He had never been so frightened in his life. It wasn’t the quick fright of a movie jump scare or the tension of someone walking into a dark house wondering if something else was in there. No, this was more the dread a convicted man might feel stepping up to the gallows, the unwavering
certainty
that something horrible was going to happen and that there was nothing that could stop it. 

The car rolled over a rise, and the chimney-shaped mountain, the one with the M on it, became clearly visible. The town below sparkled in the sun, and maybe if a person didn’t know better, all might have seemed perfectly normal. But Ross had been here before, and there were shadows where there should not have been, great swaths of land that looked as though they were recovering from a fire.  

What
was
that creature? he wondered for the hundredth time. Where had it lived? Did it have a lair? What had it fed on? How had it not been noticed before? There were so many questions left unanswered, questions that would probably
never
be answered, and his logical brain rebelled against the unresolved chaos of it all.  

He was of the belief that the creature was ancient, had been living on this land for centuries, perhaps millennia. It occurred to him that the monster’s luck had finally run out when it had been accidentally caught in that hail of celebratory bullets, and in a sort of ripple effect, once it had fallen to earth, once its luck had changed, it had started changing the luck of everyone around it. 

Ross half-expected to see other creatures flying above the town—its brethren, waiting for its metamorphosis to complete—but the skies were unnervingly clear as they approached, no birds, no clouds, only endless pale blue.  

Next to him, in the passenger seat, Kevin looked nervous. “Unc. Mind if I spark one up?” 

“No,” Ross said. “I mean, no, don’t do it. Yes, I do mind. I need you clear-headed for this.” He glanced curiously at his nephew. “You don’t…feel any different, do you?” he asked. “I mean, you haven’t been hit with any brilliant new ideas about how to go about this, have you?” 

Kevin smiled tightly. “Not yet.”  

They kept driving. 

Ross slowed the car as they came to the outskirts of the town, looking carefully around for anything amiss. There was no sign of McDaniels—which could be good, could be bad—and, feeling the tension in his arms, he drove past the ruined adobe house where they had picked up Father Ramos on their way out. Ahead, in front of Magdalena’s handful of small businesses, the street was empty. 

No, not quite. In the center of the road stood a grimy little girl, wearing a torn granny dress and a wrinkled yellow blouse covered with dried blood stains. Ross recognized her immediately, and the skin prickled on the back of his neck. It was the girl from the farmer’s market, the daughter of the mushroom seller. He looked around the street, searching for the mom, but saw no sign of her. 

His eyes still on the child, who had not moved a muscle, Ross pulled carefully up in front of the bar, pulling behind the only other vehicle he saw on the street: Jackass McDaniels’ dented red pickup truck.  

The door to the establishment was closed, and Ross honked the horn, hoping to see McDaniels come out. 

The door remained closed. 

“I don’t like this,” he muttered. 

Kevin said nothing. Whatever doubts his nephew might have had, Ross could tell that they had fled in the face of the overwhelming sense of dread that hung over the virtually abandoned town. Kevin, too, was keeping his eye on the little girl. The fact that he wasn’t suggesting that they help her, or go over and ask her what was wrong, was a pretty good indication that he thought she was as spooky as Ross did. 

Ross honked the horn again, then unbuckled his shoulder harness. “You wait here,” he told his nephew. “I’m going in to check. If you see anything weird, honk the horn and I’ll be right out.” 

“Don’t you have a gun or anything?” Kevin asked nervously. 

He had no weapons at all. The truth was that the idea hadn’t even occurred to him, although whether that was a result of his own stupidity or that demon’s influence, he would probably never know. “No,” he said. “But honk the horn and I’ll come out.” 

His hands were trembling as he got out of the car. His knees felt weak, too, but he walked around the front of the vehicle over to the closed door of the small building, took a deep breath, and opened it.  

It was dark inside, but he walked in anyway. 

The handyman was sitting alone at the bar, drinking a beer, a rifle on the countertop in front of him. “I’m assumin’ that’s you, pardner,” he said without turning around. 

“It’s me,” Ross said. 

McDaniels swiveled on his seat. “I thought you was Hec. Arrived a little early, did you?” 

“We left early.” He sat down next to McDaniels. “So your friend’s coming?” 

“Saw him last night. Said he would.” The handyman shrugged. “Hard to tell these days.” Ross couldn’t tell if he was drunk or not, but, as early as it was, he could probably use a beer, too. Or something stronger.  

Outside, the horn honked once, twice, three times.  

Without waiting to see if McDaniels was going to follow him, Ross rushed back outside.  

The farmer’s market girl was walking down the middle of the street toward them, chanting. 

“Butt fuck dick suck! Dirty pussy pie!” 

Kevin had gotten out of the car and was standing next to the open driver’s side door, his arm stretched out to the steering wheel, ready to honk the horn again. He stopped when he saw his uncle. “She just started walking and saying that.” 

“Butt fuck dick suck! Dirty pussy pie!” The girl met his eyes, thrusting her chin out belligerently. 

“Where’s your mother?” Ross asked her. 

She had nearly reached the car. He didn’t know what to do, so he moved in front of her, blocking her way. “Stop,” he said. She was only a few feet in front of him. 

“Butt fuck dick suck! Dirty pussy pie!” She leaned forward, whispering. “Stick a needle in your eye. Hope you die.” 

He jerked back at just the right minute as the filthy child tried to stab his eye with a needle that she was pinching between her thumb and forefinger. She missed, the needle scraping his cheek instead and drawing blood. Reflexively, he lashed out, hitting her in the face.  

McDaniels had come out of the bar behind him, rifle butt snug against his shoulder as he sighted down the barrel, ready to shoot. He put the weapon down when he saw who it was. 

The girl had fallen to the ground but was not crying as she stood back up. She fixed Ross with a cold stare. “Hope you fucking die.” 

He grabbed her arm and pushed her back in the direction from which she’d come. “Get out of here,” he ordered. 

He half-expected her to leap at him again, to fight back, but she wandered up the street toward the church, chanting. “Butt fuck dick suck! Dirty pussy pie! Butt fuck dick suck! Dirty pussy pie!” 

Past her, walking forlornly back and forth at the end of the street, near the front of the church, was an equally dirty man holding a handful of strings connected to dead balloons that dragged behind him on the ground. 

“Holy shit!” Kevin said. “You weren’t lying!”