The White Night (17 page)

“Well, yeah, why
wouldn’t he?”

“Uh,
proof
,
maybe?” I let the chair drop back on all fours, then lean on the table, elbows
propping me up. “Man, I’m really not trying to bust your chops here. Honest to
God. And, look, Dakota is already freaked out. First and foremost, I’m trying
to protect her, especially her emotions about all this, and to tell you the
truth, I’ve seen and heard all of this before, especially with movie stars and
musicians—”

“Sean Franks,” Preston
interrupts. “That episode in Hollywood where he lied to you about what was
going on in his house.”

“Exactly. Dude was
playing us for exposure. Somehow his producers learned what our production
schedule would be, right? Turns out, what they’d done was bribe somebody at TPC
headquarters to find out when his episode would air so he could promote his
movie.”

Dakota interjects,
“Which was a piece of shit, by the way. I remember some critic saying a statue
could’ve given a better performance.”

“Yup. Total waste
of three hours. Anyway, my point is, we heard these stories constantly. Souls
sold at discounts prices for fame and fortune. Meet me down at the crossroads
after midnight.”

“There’s nothing
for me to get out of this, Mr. Long. The opposite, actually. I could lose,
well…” Preston’s voice trails into silence. That buried-secrets look returns to
his face as he reaches into a pocket and pulls out his cell phone. “You want
proof? My buddy’s dad managed to get a picture,” he says, using his thumb to
swipe across the screen, going from photo to photo. “He was looking to dig up
dirt on one of his competitors, made some connections and managed to score an
invite to one of these little billionaire jerk-off sessions. He pulled some
real James Bond type shit to take pictures with these fake glasses he ordered
online and—anyway, here, see for yourself.”

He hands the phone
over to me and adds, “It’s like an episode of
Crime Watch Nightly
,
right?”

I hold my hand
over the screen, not looking yet because I want to see where he’s going with
this.

Dakota asks, “Why
do you say that?”

“Brandon’s dad got
that picture out, and two days later, they found him
dead
.”

“Oh no, that’s
horrible. Murdered?”

“
Supposed
to look like a suicide,” Preston says. “Lots of detail at the scene. But
Brandon and I, we had
that
, so we knew better.”

I wave the phone
around. “And now
you
have the proof? Aren’t you afraid?”

“Hell yeah, I am.”

“If it’s all true,
trusting you with this is pretty heavy, wouldn’t you say?”

“Yup.”

“So why do you
know?”

Preston shakes his
head, like he simply can’t believe the shit hand that life has dealt him. “I
got drunk at a party one night, and poof, wouldn’t you know it, Brandon’s
sister ended up pregnant. She lost the baby, but this is still my penance. I’m
the dead man’s switch if anything ever happens to Brandon.” He notes the
confused look on Dakota’s face and explains, “A dead man’s switch basically
just means I’m supposed to open the floodgates if he dies—gets murdered.”

I ask, “And he
wants you to do that why?”

“Exposure.
Publicity.” He takes a long second before he adds, “Bribery.”

“How so?”

“I’m not telling
you how much, but Healy deposits a healthy amount into an untraceable account
each month. If that stops, or if anything happens to Brandon…let it rain.”

Dakota says, “Is
that why Healy sold the beach house and moved to whatever island he bought?”

“I’d say so, yeah.
Doesn’t mean that Brandon isn’t always looking over his shoulder. His hair is
falling out. He’s lost about sixty pounds. The stress is eating him alive.”

“If Healy’s payoff
money is going into an untraceable account, send your buddy into hiding. What’s
the big deal?”

“He’s gone
already, but this is like trying to run away from cancer. You can’t escape your
own paranoia.”

I shake my head
and push Preston’s phone back across the table. “If what you’re saying is true,
we shouldn’t even be here. I don’t want any part of it. I’m not going to spend
the rest of my life hiding from some billionaire on a mission. Besides, what
does any of this have a damn thing to do with Dakota’s house being haunted?”

“I thought—” He
stops himself, rubs the bridge of his nose. “I thought, eventually, whoever
moved to that house after Healy left might show up here, just like you did, to
check on the place’s history. Then, I could use them as a cover to get to you.”

“To get to me?
What do you mean?”

“I was trying to be
careful. I figured it would set off alarms if I started asking around about
where you lived or how I could get in touch with you.”

“I’m in the
goddamn phonebook.”

“Who uses a
phonebook anymore?”

Point made, so I
drop that line and ask, “What were you hoping I could do?”

“Totally a long
shot, but I kinda hoped that if I got to you, you’d hear this story I’m telling
you, and then send that demon thing that’s in the house to wherever Healy might
be since he conjured it up. If something was haunting him, maybe he’d forget
about Brandon, and I could get this fucking picture off my phone. I don’t want
to be a failsafe anymore.”

I stare at him in
disbelief for so long, Dakota touches my arm to bring me back around. I’ve had
enough. This is insane. “What the immortal fuck are you talking about? Are you
fucking with me? Do you know how many holes are in that plan? What if you
weren’t working the day somebody came to look for information? What if nobody
ever did? What if, what if, what if. And did you really think I could just call
up this demon and hand him a map to the south Pacific and tell him where to go?
You’re kidding me with this, right? I don’t know that I’ve ever heard a
stupider plan—”

“Mike,” says
Dakota, “relax. It’s all right.”

“No, it’s not.
He’s screwing with us.”

“Hey,” Preston
says, jamming a finger at me from across the table. “I’m under a lot of stress
too, okay? I said it was a plan, I didn’t say it was a good one. You have to
sign in to use the microfiche, so I check the records every day.”

“Fake names. Or
what if we’d gone to the courthouse and found what we wanted?”

Preston sighs. “I
was going to wait a couple of months, or until I couldn’t take it anymore, and
then come looking. I didn’t—I didn’t think it through. What else was I supposed
to do?”

“I don’t know, but
what you’re asking isn’t possible. So, yeah, I don’t care what kind of proof
you have, if it’s as dangerous as you say, we don’t want any part of it.

Dakota says to me,
“But what about my house?”

“Maybe you just
leave it. Sell and get away.”

“I can’t,” she
says. “No way I can do that to somebody else. We
have
to fix it.”

“Dakota—”

“
Please
.
Not for him, for me. For everything we talked about before.”

Even with
Preston’s absolutely flabbergasting bullshit, it’s impossible for me to say no
to her pleading eyes.

Preston tries to
convince me as well by saying, “
Nobody
knows I have this. Nobody but
Brandon. If something happens to him and his copy of the evidence disappears,
I’m mailing this damn phone to the local paper and going bye-bye. Vanishing
like a ghost, so to speak.”

“Probably not the
best choice of words.”

“You get my
point.” He gingerly nudges his cell phone back in my direction.

Dakota says to
Preston, “If I were you, I’d walk out the door right now, and don’t look back.
Go start a different life somewhere. Just get away as far as you can. No matter
how unbelievably ridiculous that plan was, you’re smart enough to know you’ll
have a better chance of making it out of your twenties elsewhere. Move to
Montana. Raise a herd of cattle. Disappear. I’m sorry, but that’s what has to
happen.”

He nods, lips
flattened, frowning.

She adds in a
motherly tone, “If you need a voice of reason to tell you what to do, that’s
it.”

I tell her, “We
can’t
.
We can’t become a part of this. What if Healy finds out we know and comes after
us
? It’s a legitimate concern.”

“You’re not saying
a word, are you, Preston? Because if you do, and he finds us before he finds
you, I’ll have no trouble blabbing your name.”

“Not a peep,
ma’am. My hand to God.” Preston puts his hand on his chest.

It doesn’t comfort
me in the slightest, but Dakota seems to believe him.

Then she says to
me, “At least we’ll know what we’re dealing with, Mike. Right? Séances, Ouija
boards, even animal sacrifices? That sounds serious.”

“It’s damn
serious. And it means I was wrong about how dangerous this thing can be. Who
knows what in the hell they could’ve conjured. And I mean that literally. You
mess with shit like that, you’re bringing something up from actual
Hell
,
like proper-noun Hell. Matter of fact, I’m surprised it left so easily this
morning.” I yank the phone from underneath Preston’s fingertips. “It was toying
with me. Had to have been. If we’re going to do this… Whatever. It’ll be for
you. Not him.”

Abject frustration
and the cramped nature of this study room makes it feel like we’re sitting
inside a pottery kiln.

And yet, when I
hold the phone up to get a closer look, my skin goes cold.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Ford Atticus Ford

The shower curtain
is a dark purple color. It might as well be solid steel, an inch thick, because
I can’t see behind it.

Droplets of rain
slip in through the open window. I feel one splatter against my collarbone as
the sporadic breeze causes the shower curtain to billow and flutter again.

I stoop sideways,
bending down to lift the toilet seat and lid.

I should look
first, shouldn’t I?

It can wait. I
have to
go
. There are plenty of reasons why there’s nothing behind that
goddamn shower curtain. And besides, my grandfather, in his late days when he
had minimal control of his continence, used to say, “A bladder in need is a
bladder to heed, my boy.”

I unzip and begin
to relieve myself. Body water hammers against toilet water. I use my
peripheral vision to mind my aim while warily staying focused on the purple
cloth. I should’ve looked first.
Dummy
.

Suffice it to say,
I’m certain this is the first occasion where I’ve ever given this much
consideration to peeing. Tolstoy likely spent less time writing
War &
Peace
.

Bladder empty, I
zip, flush, and manage to take one step toward the tub before I hear
BLAM,
BLAM, BLAM
behind me
.

I screech and whip
around, glaring at the door as Lauren says, “Ford? You okay? You need to let me
in.”

“Fucking hell,
Coeburn. What’re you doing out there? You scared the piss out of me.” Which
isn’t entirely true since it’s already gone. She knows what I mean.

I imagine her
standing in the hallway, and if she was truly trying to seduce me, maybe she’s
naked. Or maybe she’s out there now, having taken the time to slip into
something more comfortable. Ye olde cliché. Cue the porn music.

“You need to let
me in.”

Irritated, I fire
back, “
Hang on
. I need to check something really quick. Just a
precaution.”

“You need to let
me in.”

“I heard you, and
no, I
don’t
. Whatever you’re doing, go put some clothes on. I mean, you
know, if you’re naked or whatever.”

“You need to let
me in.”

“I—”

Wait. Why does she
keep saying that?

The pause feels
like decades pass. The silence squeezes at my lungs.

I step over and
put my ear up to the door. “Yo. You okay?”

There’s a soft
knocking on the other side.

Tap. Tap. Tap.
“Ford?”

“What?”

Her voice is a
whimper. “You need to let me in. I’m hungry.”

What the hell?
“And you think I have food in—oh shit.”

Oh shit, oh shit,
oh shit.

You need to let
me in. I’m hungry.

The sense of
panicked realization warms my thighs, sends ripples of nausea through my
stomach, waves of skin prickling up my back.

I didn’t see it.
My God, it totally went right past me like it was wearing an invisibility
cloak.

I slink away from
the door, going toe-heel, toe-heel, as quietly as I can.

What—how did—I
missed it. I can’t
believe
I missed it.

She’s—

BLAM. BLAM.
BLAM.

She lands booming
blows on the door with such ferocious intensity that I can hear the daunting
sound of splintering wood.

My pulse rages in
my ears, matching the sound of Lauren thrashing against weak wood.

Eyes darting
around, I instinctively look for some kind of weapon or an escape route.
Toothbrush in the eye? Jam the toilet scrubber down her throat? Spray that
flowery smelling stuff in her face as a distraction? Will any of that have an effect?

I glance around,
looking up and over my shoulder. The window is too small for me to escape. I’m
trapped. A mouse in a cage with a hungry cat outside, trying to find its way
inside.

BLAM. BLAM.
BLAM.

“You need to let
me in, Ford!”

“Go away.” I
hesitate mid-step, trying to think of what to say or do next, and it costs me.
The thick sole of my black boot catches on the purple rug in front of the
toilet, folds underneath my foot, and trips me. I stumble backward, arms
flailing, twisting, trying to catch my balance.

Reaching for the
shower curtain, I clutch it in my fist, hoping that it’ll be strong enough to
hold me upright.

The foolish dreams
of a falling man hinge on two letters: if.

I hold tight,
feeling gravity take me, unrelenting, as the curtain rod gives away. In the
next gasp, I’m hurtling downward. I throw my body forward, using my shoulder as
a wedge to block my fall—not block, but temporarily pause as I linger there,
hanging over the bathtub, and then it happens. The bathmat slips from
underneath my foot, and I go down.

I land on something
soft. I feel it give under my weight. It’s a pile of—what? It feels like there
are peaks and valleys, hard and soft, as I roll onto my stomach, pushing up and
away.

Please let that
be dirty laundry.

Please let that
be dirty laundry.

Behind me, Lauren
is hurtling her body weight into the door. She’s screaming that I need to let
her in, that I need to feed her.

I yank the shower
curtain back and away, unable to delay this any longer; my supposedly
irrational fear is coming true. Something was behind the shower curtain all
along.

I feel faint,
dizzy, and nauseated when I see it.

Them
, I
mean.

Two boys. One
younger. One older. They’re dressed in the traditional black-eyed children
attire of a white shirt, a black tie, and black pants for the younger, and the older
one is in a hoodie and jeans. Their mouths are slightly open like they’re
simply in soft slumber. Their dark hair is combed to the side. Clumps of it are
missing. My eyes go down to their hands. Both of the boys bear deep claw marks on
their skin, the scratches disappearing inside their sleeves. Signs of a
struggle. Something, or someone, struggling against them.

Any air I have
remaining in my lungs escapes me as I look into their eyes. I don’t know what I
expected. It’s not this.

Their eyes are black,
but not for the same reason.

The sockets are
hollow, empty like freshly dug gravesites. A black trickle has dried at the
corners, near the bridge of their noses.

It comes to me in
a surge.

Let me in. Feed
me.

The black-eyed
children, when they say these things, they’re not talking only about the homes
of their victims. That much is clear.

You need to let
me in
. They mean into the body as well as the house. They need a new host.

I’m hungry
.
Feed me with your soul.

My own soul, the
one I’ve been trying to redeem since the night of Chelsea’s attack, curls into
a fetal ball and retreats deep inside my chest. I can feel its essence pulling
away.

I step back from
the tub. A hand goes over my mouth.

Maybe to hide my quivering
lip, maybe to hold back the vomit that’s clawing its way up my throat.

I can’t hold it
in.

Wine. Cheese.
Salami.

They all go into
the toilet as I lose my insides to fear, disgust, and terrified understanding.

I grasp how
vulnerable I am in this position as Lauren Coeburn—no, whatever that
thing
is—on the other side of the door rams it with her shoulder, raising her voice
ever higher, demanding that I let her in. She’s hungry. She needs to feed.

What now?

I try to recall
everything I’ve read in the past about the black-eyed children. Is there
anything that can be done?

Not that I can
remember. There’s simply not enough available information. It’s not like I can
fashion a stake to drive through her heart or hope to miraculously find silver
bullets for that pistol in the living room.

Now I wish I had
that damn thing.

Good time to
change your mind about guns, Ford?

I invited Lauren
in. Goddamn it, she knocked on the front door at my condo and I let her in. I
let her in here, too. She specifically said, “You need to let me in,” and I
stood to the side and watched as she entered.

I’m in such deep
shit here—not to mention the fact that my fear is like quicksand, dragging me
further and further down. Thick, brown, gooey quicksand made of poop. That
particular image doubles me over again, and I retch into the toilet again.

I wipe my mouth with
a hand towel, praying the door will hold long enough for me to formulate a
plan.

The two boys to my
right—no, the
hollow shells
in the bathtub—
they
knocked here
earlier. She let them in.

BLAM. BLAM.
BLAM.

“Ford!”

“Go back to hell,”
I scream. “I know what you are!”

As absolutely petrified
as I am, I can’t help but think this would’ve made a goddamn amazing episode of
Graveyard
. This would’ve topped the night we spent in that Italian
restaurant in season nine, and I didn’t think that was possible.

For the life of
me, I can’t figure out why Lauren would’ve let these two inside. She had to
have seen their eyes and that something was wickedly off about them.

Then, I see my reflection
in the mirror.

I
see
.

The connected dots
finally form a picture.

Ellen
let
them in. She’s almost completely blind.
Holy shit that makes sense
.

She never saw them
for what they were, and by then, it was too late.

Whatever is inside
the bodies, it jumped from them to Lauren and—

No. Damn it, no.

As if I can bear
any more, crippling regret weakens my knees.

Ulie
.

I left him at the
condo with Grandma Death Eyes.

I left him there
to protect her.

I left him there
to die.

The center of the
door splinters and shatters as Lauren manages to break through the cheap particleboard.
The hole is the size of a baseball, yet it’s plenty enough for the creature out
there to put her black, soulless eye up to it and look in the bathroom.

She giggles and
it’s so haunting, I immediately reach for my crucifix necklace.

Jesus, save me.

Is this worse than
Chelsea and Craghorn’s demon?

Yeah, quite
possibly. I’m all alone, unlike past experiences where I had Mike or a crew at
my back. When it comes to dealing with the paranormal, there’s something to be
said for reinforcements, even if it’s just a cameraman and a sound guy.

Lauren giggles
again, louder this time.

“Peekaboo, I see
you!” she says.

The thought that
the paranormal entity, whatever inhabits her body, has been inside her and
around me since she came to the condo sends my stomach twirling again. It was
baiting me. Waiting patiently. Controlling her. Allowing Lauren to be Lauren
until the time was right.

She watches me
through the hole with that single black eye as I stand here, gulping short,
shallow breaths, begging the universe, God, or common sense to hand me a
logical plan.

“Ford,” she says
in a lilting, sing-song voice. “You need to let me in.”

“Go away.”

Go away
?
Pathetic, but it’s all I have.

What happens next
is both innocuous and normal, but it literally sends me two inches off the
ground, accompanied by a childish yelp.

My phone buzzes in
my pocket.

I’ve lost track of
time, but it seems odd that anyone I know would be calling at this hour, and
yet, it gives me an idea. I jam my hand into my pocket and jerk the phone out,
only taking my eyes off the door long enough to check the caller ID.

The name surprises
me. I answer and creep back toward the far corner, whispering, “Melanie?”

“Oh God, you’re
alive,” she says, the relief evident in her voice.

“What?”

“I woke up from this
horrible dream, and I know that it’s probably because I watched an old episode
of
Graveyard
tonight, but wow, it was all so freaking scary. A demon had
attacked you and you died and I was at your funeral with Mike. It was so real I
had
to call.”

“Melanie,” I
whisper. “I
am
in trouble. Swear to God.”

“What? Are you
okay?”

“Call 9-1-1 for
Newport, right now.”

“Ford—”

“Hang up and call
them. Get the cops here.”

“What’s going on?”

I recite the
address. “If that’s wrong, tell them to look for my Wrangler. Light blue house.
White shutters. They need to bring backup for a dangerous suspect.”

“Okay, just stay
on the—”

I hang up. The
phone goes back into my pocket as I stand, wiping my drenched, sweaty palms on
my jeans.

I have no clue
what the average response time is for a call to the Newport, Oregon emergency
system, but best guess says that I have to last about three to four minutes.

Black-eyed Lauren
howls and throws her body at the door. The hole in the center splinters and
opens wider. The entrance to my fortress isn’t going to last that long.

I only have one
choice.

I crouch, weight
leaning forward on my right leg, left toe of my boot planted firmly against the
linoleum.

What in God’s name
am I doing?

I say, “I’m coming
for you, asshole. You ready for the almighty battering ram?”

Our fans would’ve
loved that.

Lauren unleashes
an ungodly howl and backs away to get a running start. I wait until she
charges, her shoulder slamming into the door. A hinge breaks free from the molding.

With every bit of
strength I have, I drive my legs forward, launching myself.

Dressed in black
pants, black shirt, black boots, and with jet black hair, I’m like a goddamn
human cannonball, plunging ahead, throwing every ounce of my weight into the
broken door, into Lauren, and into freedom, I hope.