Table of Contents
Next Chapter
Coven at World's End
Fourteen
Jessica entered the police station knowing her courage was going to
fail her. She hadn't yet found the words that might convince the police
that she knew the source of the sinister agitation gripping Oak Grove.
She held out little hope of helping the situation any. An explanation
would be as terrifying than the affliction itself. Sarah Mannhardt had
let her go knowing she wasn't thinking clearly, and knowing there was
nothing anyone could do to alleviate her suffering.
She faltered to a stop in the middle of the office. The low murmur of
voices would have soothed her upset, but behind them roared fear and anger
and approaching panic. The screaming of all these people inside her head seared at her mind
like the flame of a cutting torch. Pain
blinded her senses. She could not understand much of what she was hearing.
Had someone spoken to her? She had yet to unravel the jumble of moving
shapes in the shadows of the partially lit office.
She stumbled into the middle of the confusion, confident, at least,
that she would be stopped and explanations demanded of her. More than
likely, she would fall apart at the seams and her nightmare would descend
into an even deeper level of chaos.
Before that happened, something unexpected entered her sphere of
awareness. It was like the blanket of silence her mother had provided for
her during hours of darkness. It was a shadow of utter stillness. She
sidestepped to it, like ducking beneath an umbrella during a deluge.
Abruptly lightheaded, she stumbled against a wall and slid to the floor on
her backside.
Someone leaned over her. "Ma'am, are you okay?"
She looked up at him in awe. He was alarming, a gorilla of a man with
narrow Asian eyes. He was also a hole in the room, a core of darkness and
a shadow somehow cast from within itself. She gave a shuddering sigh of
relief, wishing in that moment that she could just end it here and die in
this peaceful moment.
The man waited with unconscious ease for her to speak her mind, but
Jessica was drowning in a tranquil pool of clear water. This man's mind
was utterly transparent and apparently free of the parasite infesting most
of Eagle Grove.
She opened her mouth to explain herself, then thought better of it.
One wrong word and he'd send her away. Once dismissed, she'd not get a
second chance. Jessica battled over how to utilize her rapidly vanishing
opportunity to spark his curiosity as he had sparked hers. She had to let
him know how important he was to her.
"May I help you?" he said again.
She felt his intent to ask the question before he voiced the words,
which meant that he hadn't entirely smothered her mind-reading ability.
"You have to help me," she said despite herself. It wasn't what she
needed to say. She couldn't make demands of him and expect his
cooperation. "I have a friend," she said instead. "She's in terrible
trouble."
That at least caught his attention. "I see. How can I help?"
She picked a story out of thin air. "Her boyfriend is going to kill
her. You have to stop him."
How could he not go with her to check it out? She was feeling tempers
flaring all over town. Somewhere, she would be able to find a woman in
need and a situation to justify her intrusion into his life. It would
give her the time she needed to feel this strange man out, to find some
explanation for his unusual ability, and to find as well some excuse to
stay close to him.
He looked out across the office and gestured to a uniformed officer.
"No!" Jessica cried out. She fought to compose herself. "It has to be
you. Nobody but you can help her."
She piqued his interest, but he needed a clear reason why he should be
personally involved. Hers would be but one crisis among a thousand.
Jessica couldn't plan out her fictitious story in advance. She reached
for whatever it took to hold his interest regardless of the risk of
backing herself into a logical dead-end. "She asked for you by name,"
Jessica said. She reasoned that there would be somebody he might know
that would come to his mind, a wife or a sister.
"Miss, I just got in to this neck of the woods. Nobody here about
knows my name."
"But she does!"
He cocked his head suspiciously. "And who might that be, may I ask?"
Jessica shook her head frantically. "I don't know her name!"
"But she knows mine?"
What was his name? He wasn't going to think it in verbal form for her
to lift from among his thoughts. She glanced around at the police officer
still watching from the sidelines. Someone nearby said something, and a
name was mentioned.
"Gant!" she said explosively. Her own unbearable tension drained
away as his began to mount. She had his full attention now. "She said
your name was Gant."
"The twelve year old?"
A name came to the forefront among his thoughts. There was a name and
thoughts of an endangered child. "Dave. She said Dave was going to kill
her."
Gant dragged her to her feet and turned her to the door. "I need a
car," he called out. Someone tossed keys.
"Jessica," she said on the way through the office with his hand
gripping her arm. "My name is Jessica Montegarde."
The night was warm and peaceful on the surface. Jessica estimated the
time at about three in the morning. Her head was swimming with fatigue.
She'd have to return to the farmhouse for a bottle of Gordy's bourbon. It
would be the only way she would ever sleep.
Gant paused in the night outside the station. "Are you a family
member?"
Jessica shook her head, seeing herself reflected from his mind, a
nervous, bird-like woman, strangely needy and desperate. And pretty. He
thought she was pretty, and it alarmed her to think that she might have to
use every weapon in her arsenal to keep him close to her, even that one.
"Have you spoken with her since the incident at the school?"
he asked gently.
Jessica didn't know what he was talking about, and he sensed the nature
of her hesitation.
"You're lying to me. Why?"
Jessica scanned the night in desperation. She felt what she needed
somewhere in the surrounding residential district, the same kind of sick
bloodlust that Gordy had suffered and the terror of his victim. Already, it was probably too late
to help her. "I
mean it," she murmured to him. "If we don't hurry, you won't be able to
help her."
He turned to a car and gestured for her to go on around and get in,
forcing her to hurry as he slipped behind the wheel, started the car, and
dropped it into gear, all in one smooth motion. Tires chirped,
electric windows rolled down, and they hummed through the quiet night
charged with madness.
"Not this way," Jessica said when Gant made a turn.
"Make a right and I'll show you the way."
He obeyed without comment, but with an intense frown.
She was lying, conning him, but with knowledge she had no access to, as if
she was picking information out of the air like a radio. Which was
as close to the truth as he could get. "Hang a right next block."
And then with soft prodding, she directed him to a upper middle class
neighborhood and an elegant two-story house of brick and basement lights
aglow.
"Oh, no," Jessica crooned in misery. "We're too
late. We're too late."
Gant stared at her in outraged exasperation.
She glanced at him in despair. "In the basement.
He's got a knife. He got in the back way. The door is still
open."
Gant got out of the car without a word and pulled a gun
from a shoulder holster. "Wait here. Don't go anywhere."
When he moved away, a roar of thoughts and powerful
emotions pulling at her from all directions tore a feeble cry from her
lips. She jammed her eyes closed, clutched the edges of her seat,
and focused as best she could on Gant.
He took his time. He went around back and found
the door open. He went inside fearfully, although not in fear of
what he would find in the basement. His thoughts were on her when a
naked, blood-soaked man with a knife whirled about in a dimly lit
basement. He didn't make a threatening gesture. He looked
startled and confused when Gant shot him point blank twice in the head.
Borderline hysteria got the best of her when he returned
to the car. She fought to control herself, terrified that he had
been traumatized, that he would cope with his own near panic by ordering
her out of the car and abandoning her to the night. He drove in
silence for a time. "Do you live around here?" he asked finally in a
casual and matter-of-fact tone of voice.
The fact that he could cope with what she was doing to
him motivated her to reason. Reason was her only weapon against
madness and the need for a self-inflicted death to escape it. She
gave him Gordy's address. Gordy would not have returned to the house
so soon. She could not sense his presence anywhere.
Pulling into the drive of the old farmhouse outside
town, Gant eyed the dead deer and Jessica studied the face of a house
darkened except for a kitchen and bathroom light. She went inside,
desperate to shower and change into clean clothing. And to eat, and
make coffee and feign normality as best she could. Gant went to the
shed, but she allowed him his moment of privacy despite the merciless
thunder in the psychic void pounding at her.
Gant took his time. He entered the kitchen to find
Jessica sipping coffee at the table. She sighed in the stillness he
brought with him although with the thought that a mad woman would not have
taken the time to refresh herself. Again, she felt his physical
attraction to her. He was not a classically handsome man and she
sensed him to be mildly deprived in his relationship with women in
general.
"What's happening back in town?" he said, not
bothering to make his question sound friendly. "How much do you know,
and how in hell do you know so much?"
Jessica couldn't just say it. He got up and stood
at the sink as an excuse to break eye contact, rinsing out the glass
coffee canter. "Black things," she said. "Horrible things. They
came from World's End. I brought them here. I didn't mean to…"
Gant got up and stood behind her. "What kind of things?"
Jessica knew better than to speak of possession. "Like a disease," she
whispered.
"You brought it here?"
Jessica nods. "I've got it."
"I've got it?"
Jessica looks around. "No, you don't have it. Sarah doesn't have it."
"Sarah?"
"A girl from World's End."
"Where's this Word's End? How far away?"
Infinitely far away, in another time and space. "A few miles from
here."
"Let's pay a visit."
The coffee canter slipped from Jessica's hands and shattered in the
sink. Pay a visit to World's End? Yes, if at all possible. Ensnare the man.
Engage his curiosity, his amazement. And stay with him. Forever, or
until she died. "Yes, we can pay a visit, and then I'll tell you
everything, because I think that you can help us."
