The White Night (18 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Mike Long

I press down
harder on the accelerator. I don’t know why I’m in a hurry to get back to my
place. I’m in even less of a hurry to get back to Dakota’s.

“Horns,” I tell
her, unable to temper my disbelief. “The thing had the most insane horns I’ve
ever seen.”

“I saw it too,”
she says. “Remember?”

I informed Preston
that extra copies had to be out there, because of the way smartphones these
days will automatically back things up to a cloud server somewhere in the
middle of nowhere. He’d reminded me, then, that there were only two—now
four—people with the knowledge of the events of that night. All it took was one
of us to get the phone into the hands of a person with media access.

That falls to him.
I refused to let him give either of us a copy.

Let me say this:
Dakota is a wonderful human being, and I’m at the point where I’ll do any thing
humanly possible to help her out, but I desperately hope beyond hope that this
doesn’t come back to bite us in the ass.

A billionaire with
a desperate secret out there?

Metaphorically
selling his soul at the crossroads with a cadre of powerful people—it all
sounds so insane, and I never would have believed it if I hadn’t seen that
picture.

And believe me, I
studied the hell out of that thing. Over the years, I got quite adept at
spotting digitally altered photos, especially when a potential client was
trying to convince us to come film at their location. Getting approval from us
meant a boatload of free exposure, plus the stipend The Paranormal Channel paid
them to allow us to film. Win-win for them all around. More often than not, they
were legit. When they weren’t, the fakes were easy to spot.

Granted, I had to
zoom in to study Preston’s picture on a small iPhone screen, so I didn’t have
the best possible situation, and there’s always the possibility that I could’ve
been experiencing something known as matrixing.

Matrixing is where
your eyes see an image, and the brain tries to put it in terms it can
understand by applying a similar image to it. The quickest example that comes
to mind is looking at a cloud and seeing a fire-breathing dragon instead of
puffy balls of condensation in the atmosphere.

That said, I couldn’t
pick out a damn bit of digital tampering.

In the photo, six
men stand in a circle, in what Dakota now uses as her master bedroom. The
seventh is from the viewpoint of Brandon’s father who is apparently trying to
take a picture with his James Bond super secret spy glasses and do his damage.
The carpet is rolled back, up against the eastern facing wall, and at their
feet, blood red candles burn around a white symbol that I don’t recognize. It’s
not a far leap to assume it’s something satanic or demonic in nature. It’s made
up of circles, swirls, star-points and what looks like two crossed scythes. An
angry skull snarls in the center.

The men are
dressed in dark colored robes, all except one, who I assume is Damon Healy, and
his cloak is obsidian black. His disciples, for lack of a better word, hang
their heads, holding clasped hands at their waists in a posture of prayer. Healy
holds a staff in his left hand, held high up over his head, where flames arch
up from the end. In his right hand—and I swear to this—he’s holding what looks
like a human heart.

It’s a bit
distorted in the photo once you zoom in at a certain level, but the heart
shines as if it’s wet.

Could it all be fake
or maybe nothing more than a demented play date?

Possibly.

And yet, a local
businessman with more money than sense, who couldn’t let a grudge go, was so
intent on getting this news out into the world that he was willing to risk his
life for it.

Poor bastard.

Which leads me to
the worst part of it.

The ritual
sacrifice? I can deal with that, no problem. To me, doing what I’ve done for so
long, that’s part of the standard operating procedure. It’s like going to the
grocery store. Another day, another dollar.

Ford and I saw
enough in our time on
Graveyard
that I understand what we’re going up
against. We had clients describe stories like this to us all the time. We were always
present when we had local actors film reenactment scenes just like the one in the
photograph. We even had one episode where we recreated something eerily similar,
as a trigger event, in the sub-levels of some eastern European catacombs.

Usually, nothing
comes of it. Some adventurous teens try to freak each other out after they’ve
procured a couple of dad’s beers from the downstairs refrigerator. They say a
few words they heard in a movie once, feel the Ouija board planchette move
around a little, spook themselves all to shit, and they’re done.

Some folks go the
extra mile and play dress-up, trying to be serious. Literally
trying
to
conjure up a demon. Morons. I wish people, no matter what they believe, would
understand the significance of what they were trying to unleash upon the world.
If they’re unsuccessful, then throw an extra dollar in the offering plate and thank
God for looking out for us.

Could be because
they said the words wrong, or maybe they sacrificed a goat that believed in the
Big Man Upstairs and the holy goat blood dripping on the satanic symbol
thingies didn’t work because the life juice was tainted with the love of Jesus.

Beats me.

Then, you get
people like Dave Craghorn, that sad, lonely, infected man in Virginia who simply
wanted to feel
less
alone, and in the process, managed to invite a
demon—our demon, Chelsea’s demon—into his home by meddling with this shit.

Finally, there are
these guys. Hardcore, real deal types.

When you’re
sitting on top of a few billion dollars, you can afford to hire the best people
to do their worst.

All that to say,
when I looked at the picture, I knew we were in some deep,
deep
trouble.

I shiver just
thinking about what I saw.

Dakota notices and
asks if I’m okay.

I smile my
okayness, as if that’s an acceptable answer.

Dakota is
comforting. I’m glad she’s here.

That fact doesn’t
help me get the image of that thing out of my mind.

A dark, murky mist
pools behind Healy, extending roughly a foot out on either side of his body. It
puffs up and out behind him, almost like a mushroom cloud, yet not as defined
in its form. Right in the center—and I’m absolutely positive this isn’t
matrixing—is a sharp, pointed face, with angular jaws and long fangs bared in a
scream. Where the eyes are supposed to be, there are two hollow pits that are
more than empty caverns. Staring at them long enough leads to a morose, pulling
sensation, as if you were being led along by a tether, drawing you deeper into the
depths of darkness, blacker than ink, horribly void of heat and light, love and
anything good in the world.

Horns. My God, the
horns.

Traditional pictures
of Satan and his minions depict creatures with two horns, one above each ear.
Left. Right. Pointing skyward or at a slightly forward angle.

That’s what we
think of when we picture a demon, right?

This thing, or at
least the image it projected in the photo as it tries to manifest, has six
horns, each one jagged and broken. Not quite antlers, not quite traditional
horns, but something in between. Branches, possibly, from say, a tree growing
outside of the demon’s rental unit in Hell Central.

Branches
doesn’t do it justice.

Knives. Razor
blades. Needles.

My stomach goes
numb picturing what those horns would do to a human body.

“Mike!” shouts
Dakota.

I come back from
the dark place my mind had gone, barely in time to spot the stoplight and the
rapidly approaching taillights up ahead. Tires squeal as I skid to a stop,
inches away from the trailer hitch of a massive pickup, the kind you would
expect to have a fake pair of bull testicles hanging from the bumper.

I see the guy look
up in his rearview mirror. He turns, looking down at us through the back window,
and shrugs, holding up his thumb and forefinger, signaling “This close, bud.”

I wave and mouth
my apologies while Dakota pats her chest, trying to get her breathing back to
normal.

I apologize, she
tells me it’s fine, and asks me what happened.

“Thinking about
tonight and that thing,” I say. “I’m…”

“Scared?” she
asks.

I agree without
meeting her eyes. I hate to admit it, but I’m truly not ready to take on
something like this on my own. It’s always been with Ford around. The crew as
well. We had people nearby carrying sophisticated equipment. Backup. There’s no
way on God’s green earth that I’m allowing Dakota to come with me tonight, not
after what I saw in the picture, and I have nobody else to go with me.

I consider
tracking down a local paranormal group, which would be the best possible
scenario, but with something this treacherous lurking around, I can’t risk it
with a greenhorn group of people who don’t have enough experience to know how
to guard themselves properly.

I have to face
this alone.

So, hell yeah, I’m
scared.

A small part of me
considers the possibility of Chelsea’s demon being in the area. It’s not
here
,
is it?

We thought that
was a ridiculous possibility in Craghorn’s house, and you saw how that turned
out. Once you consider the distance, the Outer Banks really aren’t that far
away from the Hampton Roads area. If that right-hander can jump from Ohio to
the Virginia coast, then there’s nothing saying it couldn’t have sauntered a
couple hours south.

Particularly if a
group of obnoxiously wealthy Satan worshippers—with monetary access to all the best
bad people—were literally putting out a flashing neon sign that read OPEN.

I’m going to say that’s
too much of a damn coincidence.

Besides, that
fucking thing hates
Ford
, not me.

Dakota says, “Green
light.”

“Hmm?”

“Gas pedal is on
the right.”

I look up to see
the monster pickup already fifty yards ahead of us and picking up speed. “Yep,
got it.”

I hit the gas too
hard, prompting Dakota to say, “Maybe we should get home in one piece, huh? Or
would you like to kill us before we get there so the demon doesn’t have to?”

“Lost in thought,”
I admit. “This is infinitely bigger than I expected, and holy shit, how was I
so far off earlier? I thought for sure this would be—maybe not harmless, but
easier.”

“So what do we
do?” She turns to me with a concerned, expectant look, the creases between her
eyebrows creating furrows over her nose.

“
We
aren’t
doing anything,” I answer. “The best thing for you to do is go rent a hotel
room somewhere, or,” and I’m stunned that I’m offering this, “maybe you could
go hang out with Toni tonight. Let me handle this.”

She throws herself
sideways in the seat, puts her back up against the window. “By yourself?
Absolutely not,” she says. Her tone tells me I won’t have much success with an
argument. I recognize this tone because Toni uses it all the time.

Dakota crosses her
arms, not pouting, but angry-like. “You can’t do this alone.”

“I can and I have,”
I lie. “You saw that thing in the picture, Dakota. I’m not letting you anywhere
near it.”

“And you’re
forgetting that I’ve been living with it for weeks. We might as well be
roommates.”

“All the more
reason to stay away. You’re already weakened to it, and one bad night could tip
you into a place that you’re not climbing out of. That’s all it would take.
Trust me on this.”

“Wouldn’t you
agree that having two
positive
sources of energy—the two of us
together—that’s better than you alone, right?”

“I guess.”

“See?”

“Don’t confuse my
agreement for an invitation.”

“I can feel
something changing already by having you around. Getting me out of there, your
positive vibes. It’s a
good
thing. I feel like, emotionally, I’m getting
stronger. You could use me. You
need
me.”

“Dakota—”

“Besides,” she
interrupts, plowing straight through my reply with her miniature tirade, “I
don’t want to hang out with your wife and her boyfriend.” She stops, a surprised
look of “Oops, shit!” yanking her eyebrows high as she gasps, “I’m sorry.” Her
hand flies up to cover her mouth.

“My wife and her
what
?”

Dakota turns her
attention elsewhere. “Forget I said that.”

“Huh-uh. You don’t
get to hold out, not after that.” I whip the BMW into a grocery store lot,
sidle up next to a beige minivan, and slam the shifter into park. “Tell me.”

Dakota reaches for
me. I think about pulling away, and instead, I let her take my hand.

“Tell me it’s not
what I think.”

Who am I kidding?
I’ve suspected it for ages.

She says, “It’s
none of my business.”

“You say that
now
?
Wait, you acted like you didn’t know her. Were you…were you hiding this all day
long?”

“I didn’t
want
to. You deserved to know, it’s just that—I didn’t know if I should, or if you’d
believe me. People get protective over stuff like this. I’ve had friends in the
past who got pissed and ended up hating the person who told them more than the
spouse doing the cheating.” She clamps her other hand on top of mine.

“Tell me
everything.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“When I can drag
myself outside to actually go running, I’ve seen her a few times. With another
man, I mean. This morning I recognized her as soon as I walked in the door, and
it was her, and you weren’t the man I’d seen her with, and, yeah.”