After Midnight, page 20
Setting aside that awful occurrence in Mommy Dearest’s sitting room, Milo felt he had been pretty damned fortunate in life. He had lived the way he wanted, hunting among the defenseless and unsuspecting sheep for years and taking his pleasures from them pretty much whenever he damn well pleased.
So, on reflection, this definitely was the worst, most frustrating punishment he could possibly imagine enduring. Looking out through the old biddy’s rheumy eyes as she stared resolutely at the dashboard or, even worse, The Evil Bitch, was bad enough.
But having to listen as they relentlessly besmirched his memory, trashing his reputation in the worst possible way just hours after snuffing out his physical presence, well, Milo thought that might be more than he could bear.
But of course, he had no choice in the matter. He had to bear it. The only alternative would be to jump from the old biddy’s head into The Evil Bitch’s head, and what the hell would that accomplish? Absolutely nothing. He would be no better off than before, stuck helplessly listening as they performed their relentless and undeserved character assassination on him.
And the worst part was that Milo knew without a shadow of a doubt the old biddy was aware of his presence. She had to know he could hear every word, and that their pathetic little display of family bonding would do nothing more than make the inevitable ending to this little drama that much more painful for the both of them.
And inevitable it was.
It was preordained.
There was only one way this silent standoff, Milo versus Virginia, could end: Eventually Mommy Dearest would forget, even for just a second, that she couldn’t risk looking at or interacting with anyone except Caitlyn Connelly. Eventually she would do exactly that and when she did, Milo would take full advantage. He would strike without any semblance of mercy, not that he wouldn’t have done so, anyway.
He half listened to them drone on, two hens clucking at each other inside their moving henhouse, as he daydreamed about the rapidly approaching end of The Evil Bitch’s life. He would crush her like the bug that she was, and of course Mommy Dearest would be forced to watch, because he wanted to watch.
Then, after she had been disposed of, Milo would turn his attention and advanced brainpower on the issue of how he was going to escape Virginia Ayers’s deteriorating body and into whose he was going to jump. The situation right now seemed hopeless—there was no reason to believe he could jump into anyone else’s head—but Milo knew that once he focused his particular brand of advanced intelligence on the problem, a solution would present itself.
Perhaps he would push a suggestion into someone’s brain to research the entire genealogical history of Virginia Ayers’s family. It wouldn’t be difficult. Hell, with the advent of the Internet, very little about researching any topic was difficult now.
Once the family tree was laid out in front of him like a road atlas, Milo was willing to bet that another suitable host would be found, someone blood-related closely enough to the old biddy that that person would have no choice but to serve as reluctant host.
Hell, if he played his cards right, Milo thought there was every possibility he might just be able to achieve near-immortality! Jump into the head of someone young enough to serve as his portal into the outside world for many decades, and then, as that person’s life span ticked down, do another search and find another blood relative and start the entire process over again.
He smiled to himself. In the span of less than thirty minutes, while the two doomed women discussed his failings and their supposed superiority, Milo had solved his only real problem, and overcome the only barrier to his ascendance to near-Godlike status.
They still had no idea who they were fucking with. But they would find out soon enough.
* * *
The Evil Bitch’s car rolled down the highway—at least, Milo assumed it rolled down the highway, since he had no way of knowing for sure until the old biddy came to the inevitable realization that her stupid “plan” for stopping him was just as doomed as she was—and the women continued their pathetic love-fest, complimenting each other on their bravery and plotting ways to keep Mommy Dearest out of jail.
It was sickening, but their words became almost a tuneless buzzing to Milo as he made every effort to avoid paying too much attention to them. It was the only way he could keep from being overcome by self-righteous fury.
So he almost missed it when the old biddy revealed her secret to The Evil Bitch. Their words had been flowing over his consciousness like river water bubbling over a streambed, but somewhere inside, Milo’s subconscious must have been paying attention because a half second after Virginia said the words, Milo shook off his lethargy and began concentrating.
Three little words he had never expected her to say; at least not to The Evil Bitch: “Milo’s still here.”
The fact that she spilled the beans didn’t worry Milo. It didn’t change anything to have Connelly know the truth. In fact, in some ways it made the situation even better. The terror The Evil Bitch would have to endure before Milo finished her off would be much deeper, more visceral, with the knowledge that he had not perished in Virginia’s brutal display of treachery. She would suffer. And that knowledge would have warmed Milo’s heart if he’d had one.
Still, this was an unexpected development, not just for him but for The Evil Bitch as well. The car veered violently to the right before Connelly wrestled the steering wheel the other direction, pulling the car back into its travel lane amidst the blaring of a pair of horns, one behind Connelly’s car and one next to it.
They came damned close to dying, and wouldn’t that have been ironic? In her panic, Mommy Dearest forgot her self-imposed prohibition on looking out the windshield, and Milo caught a glimpse of the silver iron guardrail rushing at them and then receding. Then the old biddy came to her senses and once again resumed staring at the dashboard.
A shocked silence pervaded the car’s interior. This was getting interesting. Milo waited patiently, curious to see what would happen next.
42
Cait struggled to get the car back under control as the impact of her mother’s words struck her with the force of a blow to the head. The familiar terror came rushing back, unreasoning and all encompassing, and for a moment it was all she could do to breathe.
She concentrated on keeping the car centered now that she had wrestled it back into its travel lane, only dimly aware she had nearly killed both herself and Virginia with her spastic reaction to the last words she had ever expected to hear out of her mother’s mouth. Angry drivers honked at her and she ignored them.
For what felt like a long time, no one spoke. Then, when she thought she might be able to get the words out without advertising her terror too plainly, she said, “What do you mean, Milo’s still here? The news reports were very specific. ‘Milo Cain, notorious Boston serial torturer/murderer, was found dead in his bed at Bridgewater State Hospital outside of Boston today.’ That was the report. Are you telling me that’s a lie?”
Cait waited for her mother to answer, dreading what she might say. She prayed she had misheard the words, or misunderstood them, but knew at the same time she had not. She began to think Virginia was not going to answer, that she had played a hideously cruel practical joke on Cait for some unfathomable reason.
Then her mother answered, and the reality of the words was even worse than anything Cait could have dreamed in her most fevered nightmare. “No,” she said. “The news reports were not a lie. And they were accurate, at least as far as they went.”
“As far as they went.” Cait shivered, although the temperature in her car had to be close to eighty degrees. “What is that supposed to mean?”
Virginia sighed. Cait thought the sound was filled with fear and regret and maybe even resignation. “It means there’s more to the story. It means that while I did end Milo’s physical life…”
The icy chill that had caused her to shiver began taking over Cait’s body like an advancing army as Virginia spoke, leading the way for a sense of black dread that followed in its wake. It covered Cait like a blanket, trapping her beneath, alone with her terror as her mother finished speaking.
“It means,” Virginia continued, “that while I did end Milo’s physical life, he managed to find a way to survive outside his body.”
Understanding began to dawn in Cait and with it, acceptance. The nightmare truly would never be over until she was dead. She had allowed herself the brief, plainly delusional hope that everything might finally be all right, but everything was not going to be all right. Everything would never be all right.
Cait knew now what Virginia was going to say, but she could no more interrupt her mother before she had finished speaking than she could perform surgery on herself or stop the sun from rising and setting every day.
“It means,” Virginia finished, “that your head is not the only one Milo can leap into. I discovered that he can enter mine as well. I learned this the hard way. For both of us.” Her voice faded away as she spoke until by the time she had finished her statement it was no more than a paper-thin whisper. The words floated into the air and disappeared like steam from a coffee cup.
But to Cait they may as well have been shouted through a megaphone or screamed from the top of a mountain.
Virginia’s words contained a finality that could never be undone. It occurred to Cait that up until a moment ago, even when things had been at their worst—Kevin attacking his attorney inside the courtroom, for example—she had held on to a vague unreasoning hope, like a child wishing away the monster under the bed.
Not anymore. Not only was the monster still under the bed, it was now slithering/crawling/climbing out, mouth open, teeth exposed, ready to slash into her and devour her whole.
“He’s here now, isn’t he?” she said. Somewhere in a corner of her mind, Cait was surprised at how calm she sounded. Inside, she was a quivering, shaking little girl, stunned by the realization there would be no fairy-tale finish to her story. No prince was going to ride in on a white horse and save her at the last minute. Her prince was sitting in a jail cell and was unlikely to walk free for a long, long time.
“Yes,” her mother said simply.
And everything made perfect, horrible sense. The words her mother had spoken last summer as they sat at her scarred, ancient kitchen table, about twins in the family’s bloodline and one’s inevitable violent end at the hands of the other weren’t just history, static and immutable.
They were much more than that. They were a prophecy, living and breathing just as Cait lived and breathed herself. And she could never outrun that prophecy. She’d been a fool even to try.
“What happens now?” Cait asked, and she noticed the same tone of resignation in her words that she had sensed in her mother’s sigh a few moments ago.
Virginia didn’t answer, and Cait took her eyes off the road for just a second. She glanced over and blinked in surprise, unable to comprehend the sight: Virginia Ayers reaching for the door handle as the car hurtled along I-75 at nearly seventy miles per hour.
43
Virginia realized there was nothing more to say. There was plenty she wanted to say; she would have been happy to sit in the car talking with Caitlyn forever.
Their conversation, although centering on murders and jury trials and comatose family members with bizarre powers and homicidal tendencies, still felt as close to a normal mother/daughter conversation as she was ever likely to get, considering their tragic and violent family history.
As far as Virginia was concerned, Caitlyn could have driven to the Gulf of Mexico and then turned north, motoring on up west coast of Florida and then turning toward Nevada or California, or anywhere else far, far away. She wouldn’t have minded a bit. They could talk and bond, just the two of them.
But it wasn’t going to happen. They were getting dangerously close to Caitlyn’s Tampa exit, and any mention by Virginia of passing the exit would be sure to raise the suspicions of Milo, who continued to lurk inside Virginia’s head like a ticking time bomb.
She knew what she had to do and for it to be successful, Virginia had to do it while on the highway.
Hopefully Caitlyn would understand.
Virginia kept her gaze focused on the dashboard, exactly as she had done throughout the drive, with the only exceptions being the few occasions she looked into her daughter’s eyes and the second or two of sheer panic when it seemed the car was about to smash into the guardrail.
It wasn’t easy. One slip-up and Milo would tumble to what was happening, and then all would be lost.
She stared at the dashboard.
She carried on the conversation with her daughter regarding her son, making every effort not to sound any more stressed or upset than she had during the entire ride.
And she fumbled for the latch on her seat belt.
It was on her left side, the side closest to Caitlyn, and that was a problem. If Caitlyn noticed what she was doing, her natural reaction would be exactly the same as anyone else’s: she would ask what in the hell was going on.
And that would be all it would take to raise Milo’s suspicions.
So she worked slowly, deliberately, sliding her right hand across her body at her waist, doing her best to keep her hand and arm out of Caitlyn’s peripheral vision.
Goddammit, this is hard.
With her left hand she braced the metal buckle, wrapping her small fist around it to deaden the sound as much as possible. Then she felt around the edge with her right hand, hooking her fingers under the latch.
She paused and took a deep breath, amazed she had managed to carry on an intelligent enough conversation to avoid raising the suspicions of Caitlyn or Milo. She hoped.
She pulled on the edge of the latch. It lifted maybe half an inch and then Virginia felt resistance. Then there was a small click. It sounded like a bomb exploding to Virginia and she froze, wanting desperately to glance up at Caitlyn to see whether she had noticed, but not daring to do so.
A second passed. Another. Caitlyn continued to drive and talk as though nothing had changed. Virginia breathed a sigh of relief. The seat belt was now unbuckled.
Keeping her eyes downcast as she had done all along, Virginia feigned a stretch, lifting her torso off the back of the seat and raising her arms. She slipped the reinforced strap of the restraint off her shoulder and at the same time leaned back, hoping to trap the belt against the seat before it could reel itself into place with the distinctive snapping sound anyone who has ever ridden in a car would recognize.
Again she held her breath, certain that her luck would run out and her desperate plan would be exposed.
Again nothing happened. Caitlyn continued on, unaware of her mother sitting next to her sliding out of her restraint like a naughty child.
Virginia knew she had to hurry. Without looking out the windshield there was no way to know exactly how much time she had before Caitlyn took the exit off I-75, but it was definitely becoming an issue.
She took a deep breath and let her thoughts wander through the years one last time. Some joyful times, most of them decades earlier, and plenty of sorrow and fear. Then more recently, joy again.
Her eyes began to water and she closed off her mind. Steeled herself for what was to come. And then did what she had to do.
44
Cait glanced from her mother’s arm to her face and back again. Virginia’s arm was snaking along the passenger-side door’s armrest as her eyes continued to bore resolutely into the closed glove box like it was the most fascinating thing she had ever seen.
She opened her mouth to ask what was going on, and the blast of an air horn from an eighteen-wheel behemoth snapped her attention back to the road. She had started drifting again and damned near sideswiped the truck.
“Dammit,” she muttered in frustration and confusion and fear, whipping the wheel to the right. The question she had been about to ask was forgotten.
45
If he could have managed it, Milo would have laughed out loud. The Evil Bitch and Mommy Dearest seemed to be self-destructing right before his borrowed eyes. Connelly was weaving down the highway like a drunken sailor home on leave, while the old biddy seemed to have gone catatonic. Her gaze hadn’t lifted from the dashboard in what felt like hours.
What the attraction of the goddamn dashboard was for her, Milo had no clue. She had been staring at it with the unwavering intensity of a religious fanatic. But then, it really didn’t matter. The pleasure he was getting from driving the two people he hated so much nearly to the breaking point was something he would relish forever.
The truck blasted its horn and Connelly swerved and cursed and Mommy Dearest did her best impersonation of a catatonic Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Milo thought this might just be one of the best days ever.
He hadn’t had this much fun in ages.
46
Virginia’s next move was utterly unexpected.
Cait had no sooner gotten the car under control—again—than she turned back to her mother, trying to remember what they had been talking about just before their latest near-wreck. Her nerves were shot and she felt as though she might throw up or have a heart attack at any moment. She didn’t know how much longer she could take the stress. She wondered for a split second how long anyone could be expected to handle the relentless pressure of Milo Cain without cracking up.
And then she forgot all about it, staring in open-mouthed horror as Virginia Ayers clawed at the door handle.
Missed it.
Clawed at it again and this time her grasping fingers made contact, curling around the metal handle and yanking hard.
Instantly, warm Florida Gulf Coast air began to swirl through the little vehicle, buffeting it as the seventy-mile-per-hour air outside the car tried to force its way inside and equalize the pressure.
