Hollywood Monsters, page 23
“But you knew he was capable of manipulating others, didn’t you?” I wasn’t ready to let this go.
“Not if he couldn’t get out of his tomb. Hence the wards.”
I made an inarticulate noise of disgust and frustration.
“He’s been doing it for decades,” Shaina said. “Scaring some of the people that came to the mansion. Killing others. His favorite was—is—when he can use them, though. He calls them his ‘meat puppets.’”
“I guess it works on supes, too.” Drift looked ashamed. I suspected he thought he should have somehow been stronger, able to resist DuShane’s influence. I wasn’t sure why Kana, Cayden, and I hadn’t been affected, but I didn’t think it was because we were any better than Drift. I’d bet good money Cayden had committed more questionable acts than Drift ever had.
“That’s not the worst of it,” Shaina continued. “When one of his puppets does something violent… something horrible, like rape, murder, arson…” She swallowed again, looking sick to her stomach. “…it feeds DuShane somehow. Makes him stronger. And it’s… it’s like a virus. I’m not sure if it’s transmitted by touch or just proximity, but some of the people who’ve left here passed it on to others.
“This explains so many of the accounts. Even in the research, I didn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe it. This place is a focal point, a ‘locus,’ they call it. The energy, it’s been building over the years… and when you locked him back up, all it did was make it worse when the wards were removed. Because we thought it was safe to film there—and it wasn’t.”
Cayden’s face was expressionless.
“Jesus,” Drift muttered.
“It gets worse,” she said.
Color me unsurprised.
“Every person who’s susceptible along the way is going to take this crazy shit and spread it further, and the more it spreads, the stronger he’ll become and the more it’ll keep spreading. It… it won’t stop.”
I turned to Cayden. “Can you lock DuShane up again? Put the wards back up?”
He hesitated. Then sat down on the floor, cross-legged, and shut his eyes.
“What—”
“Shhhh.” Sean held up his hand and I shut up.
Cayden sat there for a minute or so, motionless, hands resting lightly on his knees. Then he opened his eyes, shook his head.
“No. He’s too strong. The only way to stop this is to restore the balance of the vortex.”
“What exactly does that mean?” I glared at Cayden. “How do we do that?”
“We need to reboot it,” he replied. “Take the power from DuShane, neutralize it, and then put it back into the vortex.”
“And again I ask—what… exactly… do we need to do?” I growled.
“We need to take down all the wards at the mansion,” Cayden said. “And the protective sigils here, as well.”
“Here?” I cut a glance at Sean, who looked decidedly uncomfortable. It was Seth, however, who replied.
“The power of the vortex needs to cycle freely in order to take it away from DuShane. The wards at the mansion and the protections put up here at the Ranch have maintained a neutral balance for decades.” Seth glared at Cayden. “But shit went sideways when this jackass didn’t pay attention to what was happening right under his nose.”
Cayden didn’t spare a glance for Seth.
“I’ll do whatever needs to be done to fix this.”
“You’ll need to shut it down first,” Sean said quietly. “Which means temporarily taking its power into yourself and drawing it away from DuShane.” He paused, then added, “It could burn your power away permanently. Or kill you.”
“Or he might step in and take up where DuShane left off.” Seth glared at Cayden. “You created this mess, you sonofabitch, so you fix it.”
“It’s too late for that,” Cayden replied. “We have to work together. Are you willing to risk the end of the world just to spite me?”
Seth turned to his father, practically vibrating with outrage.
“You’re not actually going to help him do this, are you?”
“No,” Sean replied. “We are.” Turning to the rest of us, he added, “Please excuse us. My son and I need to call in some reinforcements.” With that, he and Seth went into the kitchen and shut the door.
* * *
Okay, I’m not proud. I eavesdropped. But Sean and Seth had kept yet another secret from me all these years, so I managed to live with the guilt.
Why hadn’t they told me about the vortex? Or that the protective wards or sigils were not just here to protect the Ranch, but in reality had a much greater purpose? The more I thought about it, the angrier it made me.
“I don’t understand why you agreed to this,” Seth said. “Undo the protection of the Ranch, to turn the power of the vortex over to him? Even if we could release the seals—”
What seals?
“You and I can’t release them.”
“Then what are we even talking about—”
“But three of us could.”
“You don’t mean…”
“Of course I do.”
Seth was silent for a moment. “He won’t like it,” he said finally.
He. Who he?
“When have you ever know him to like anything?” Sean said. “Besides, he knows what our job requires of us, of him. Time to bring him into the ring. You and I have been handling this situation on our own long enough, goddamn him.”
“God might, you know,” Seth said after a pause. “He might damn all three of us.”
“He certainly will if we fail. Come on, we’re wasting time we don’t have.”
“Do we even know where he is now?”
“Beersheab maybe. No, some Nabatean ruins in the central Negev, I think. Not that it matters. He’ll come.”
There was another pause, and then…
“Sammu-El, ha’ăzînāh,’āḥînū,” Sean intoned.
Okay, this was new. Something else they’d been keeping from me.
“Samuel, our brother, hear us now,” Seth echoed.
Oh jeez, not him.
“Wə’āḥ ləṣārāh, yiwwālêḏ, wəyāḇōw lānū…”
“For adversity, is a brother born—he will come to us…”
“Sammu-El, tāḇōw lānū…”
“Samuel, will you come?”
“Sammu-El, tāḇōw lānū.”
“Samuel, will you come?”
“Sammu-El, tāḇōw lānū.”
“Samuel, get your ass over here!”
“Peace, you two.” It was a new voice. “I’m here.”
I recognized that voice.
Well, hell.
The kitchen door opened, almost smacking me in the face. I scrambled backward as Seth and Sean came out, followed by a third man, one with the look and muscular build of a mountain man, with long hair and salt-and-pepper beard. He was dressed for desert hiking, in weathered boots, drab brown jeans and shirt.
“Lee.”
“Uncle Sam,” I said flatly.
We stared at each other without love.
* * *
“Okay,” I said, doing my best to ignore Sam’s disapproving stare. “Just to be clear. We have to get back onto DuShane’s property without being noticed by whatever crazies are still up there.” No one said anything. I glared around the room. “Am I getting this right, folks?”
Seth and Cayden nodded at the same time, both looking irritated by their synchronicity.
“That’s about the size of it,” Cayden said.
“So we can’t drive back up the way we came. DuShane will probably have his crazies all over the front gates. We need to find a back entrance.”
Kana cleared her throat. “I believe I can help you with that.”
Cayden looked over at her. “Are you thinking…”
She nodded.
I rolled my eyes, trying to ignore a wave of irrational emotion at the private “we share a secret” look that passed between her and Cayden. I didn’t want to feel anything toward Cayden except anger. Intense, justified anger.
“Maybe let the rest of us in on the secret?”
“I apologize, Lee.” Kana inclined her head in my direction. At least one of them had manners. “There is a series of sandstone caves in the foothills at the base of the mountain. DuShane had a tunnel built from the caves to the subbasement of the mansion.”
“That’s right!” Shaina sat up despite the fact she still looked kinda green. “The smugglers’ tunnel. He used it during Prohibition. The Silver Screamers had heard of it. They weren’t sure where either end of the tunnel actually was, but they were positive it exists.”
“Okay, we know there’s another way onto the property, but we don’t know where it is.” I looked over at Cayden. “Any chance you can find it?”
“Given time, yeah,” he replied, “but I don’t think we have any to spare.”
“Shaina?”
“It’s somewhere at the base of the foothills, near the mansion, but that’s all I know.”
Like where I’d found Jada’s Xterra. The shadowed slit in the sandstone I’d seen before Detective Fitzgerald and the Kolchak Squad had arrived.
“I think I know where the entrance is.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Seth and Sean set up wards in the barn and back area to help protect the wildlife that had come here for refuge, and so Shaina and Drift would be safe from DuShane’s influence as well. So they stayed behind.
“So how do we sync up with you?” I asked. “I mean, we don’t know how long it’ll take for us to get into the mansion, find the wards, and remove them.”
“We’ll know,” Sean assured me.
“I’ll know.” Cayden stared at Sean as if in challenge. If we survived, I was so going to get to the bottom of whatever was up between Cayden and everyone I knew.
“You should leave us at the back acre,” Seth said.
“Good idea,” Sean agreed. “We can create a distraction at the mansion’s gates to draw attention away from you.”
Cayden and I looked at each other. “Yeah,” he said. “Let’s do it.”
Kana got to her feet. Cayden put a hand on her shoulder.
“You don’t have to do this.”
“I think you will need me,” she said calmly, tucking a lone stray lock of hair behind her ear.
* * *
Tendrils of psychic poison began to spread, drifting outward from the mansion on invisible currents that had nothing to do with wind or weather. Most people were affected by it on a subconscious level. Many smiled as though they’d just heard a secret or received an unexpected gift.
Those who it couldn’t touch felt a momentary revulsion, as if something like a slug or spider had brushed their skin. A tired young mother in Reseda struck her child after she’d asked one too many times for another cookie. Her six-year-old daughter responded by picking up a fork and stabbing her mother in the arm.
* * *
A teenage boy smoking a cigarette in a park playground in Camarillo looked around at the dry leaves scattered on the grass, tossed the still smoldering butt onto the ground, and watched as the leaves caught fire before walking quickly away. Luckily a passerby saw the flames and stomped them out before the fire could spread.
* * *
At a Trader Joe’s parking lot in Encino, a woman in a BMW cut off another woman in a Mercedes in an attempt to snag the last parking spot. The Mercedes owner promptly smashed the front of her vehicle into the side of the BMW, killing the driver.
Then she parked her car, got out, and went inside the store to shop.
* * *
Choking, Ray spat out his half-chewed bite of cheeseburger. Framed by the chipped white plate, the food sitting in a spattered bed of meat juices and spittle made for a nasty bit of abstract art.
Hooking a finger in his mouth to fish out one last bit of gristle, the trucker glared at the wet clump as though it was alive and squirming. It looked like something a sick cat would hack up, a blood-tinged hairball, or the remains of a mouse.
“Shit-fuck!”
Shocked by his outburst, the diners at the neighboring tables froze, some of them mid-bite, and stared. Ray extricated himself from the booth with another rumble of muttered profanity. Embarrassed and angry now, he stormed over to the startled waitress at the counter.
“This a goddamned joke?” he barked.
“What’s the matter, hon?” The waitress was well-practiced in dealing with rude customers, but today she was at the end of her rope. “There a problem with your meal?”
“You’re fucking right there’s a problem! Look at this!” He waved the uneaten half of his burger at her like a prosecuting attorney.
“Sugar, there’s no need to be raisin’ your voice. You give me just a minute, I’ll have the cook fix you a new one.”
“I’m not gonna eat another bite of that bastard’s food. I’m going to kick his ass!”
That was it. She dropped her voice low and firm, the glare in her eyes all business.
“Look mister, you get that out of my face right now, or I swear I’m calling the cops.”
“Call ’em! I’ll sue all your asses!”
“Alrighty then.” She abruptly turned her back on him and called into the window to the kitchen, “Carl! Get the sheriff here!”
“Carl, huh? That his name?” Ray made for the end of the counter. “Well, I’m just gonna have a little talk with Carl.” Still clutching the burger, he shoved his way past the waitress and barged into the kitchen, advancing on the skinny fry cook at work on the grill. Carl was grinning.
“Hey! You think you’re funny, you scrawny little—”
The trucker halted, struck by a horrible stench. The cook had been cleaning the grease trap, and had a dirty bucket filled with a congealed mess the color of rotting pumpkins. He was in the process of dipping in his spatula and carefully dolloping out globs of the rancid mixture, mixing it into every sizzling meat patty he put on the grill. The toxic sludge was speckled with floor sweepings—dirt, hair, grime, and bits of unidentified crud—and smelled like raw sewage.
The cook looked up at him and smiled.
“Flavor’s in the fat,” he said matter-of-factly. “You see? That’s where the flavor is.” He turned back to his work, humming a merry little tune.
The remains of the burger slipped from the trucker’s numb fingers and dropped to the floor. The waitress continued to holler at him from the window. Dumbstruck, the trucker stood stock still for a long moment. Then he reached a decision.
Stepping up behind the cook, he grabbed him, yanking the apron and dirty T-shirt up around his neck to expose the little man’s chest and belly. Overpowered, the man shrieked and squirmed, but the bigger trucker had no problem hoisting him up, and then pinning him firmly face-down on the hot, greasy grill.
The shrieks grew louder and louder… then stopped.
There. Now it smells better, Ray thought.
* * *
Emergency Room, Los Robles Hospital, Thousand Oaks. Afternoons were always bad, but this one was worse than usual. Every seat was filled, and it was standing room only. The packed waiting room felt like a Civil War field surgery, and smelled like a slaughterhouse.
Jesus, what’s in the water today? Cora wondered. Folks out there losing their damn minds. In the distance more ambulance sirens wailed like alley cats. The admissions nurse turned her attention back to the fretful mother at the front counter.
“Ma’am, I’m sorry that you have to keep waiting, but we have to attend to the most serious cases first,” Cora explained yet again.
“But my son’s eye—”
“We’re taking your son’s injury very seriously, Mrs. McAdams, and I promise you we will get him stitched up just as soon as we can. But it’s not a life-threatening injury. The doctors are back there working to save someone’s life right now.”
She fought to retain her composure, and kept her gaze carefully averted from the boy’s face. Blunt force trauma orbital fracture. A teammate at his softball game had lost his grip during a wild swing, and the McAdams boy had been clipped by the pinwheeling bat. Now his left eye bulged ominously from the bruised and bloodied socket. He might even lose the eye, she knew—but he wasn’t going to die. So, he would have to wait until the surgeons saved the stabbing victim—or lost him.
The boy’s mother, however, refused to move from the counter. Mrs. McAdams opened her mouth to raise more objections, when a commotion came from down the corridor, loud voices in the operating room.
“My god, what’s all that noise? Are they finished in there?”
Cora kept her expression impassive. The nurse had no idea know what the racket was, but she doubted it was good news for anyone.
She felt anger begin to blossom.
“Mrs. McAdams, I need both of you to please sit down. They’ll tell us when they’re ready for you.”
“Well, can you check?”
Unleashing a shriek of rage, Cora shot out a hand to grab the woman by the neck, yanking her into the window and landing a fist squarely in her face. Cora hit her again, and again, and again—in her imagination.
In reality, she only frosted the woman with a death-stare.
“Sure. I’ll do that,” she said. “Just wait here, please.”
Anything for a moment’s break from these insane people. She rose and slipped out into the hallway that led to the surgery, shaking her head. At the threshold to the OR she paused and listened. There was a strange outburst coming from behind the double doors.
It was laughter.
Not just laughter. Howls of laughter. What the hell?
She hesitated, then dared to peek in. A piercing yet monotonous electronic drone issued from the EKG monitor, its screen nothing but a solid flatline trailing through blackness. But the surgeons weren’t finished attending to their patient—they were bent over him, meticulously unspooling all of his intestines onto the floor of the operating room. The attending nurses and the anesthesiologist roared at the macabre scene.
A wave of vertigo and nausea shivered through her, and Cora nearly passed out. Then another sound rose. Screams suddenly echoed off the hospital walls, coming from the waiting room.
