314 Book 3 (Widowsfield Trilogy) (33 page)

Jacker
was waiting beside the security van with his arms crossed. He watched the caged light that was above the entrance as it flickered. It would grow dim, and then flash bright, threatening to break at any moment.

The moths’ enticement by the light was unfazed, and they continued to spin around and around, thwacking into the metal bars in their fervor. The combination of his weariness and the pulsing light made the moths’ dance nearly hypnotic.

The crook of his arm itched.

He scratched at the place where he used to put the needle in when he was shooting heroin. He could feel the vein beneath his skin, thick and
plump, and just the sensation of pressing against the vein gave him pleasure. He closed his eyes and imagined his finger was a needle, tapping into the vein, delivering euphoria. He felt his lips grow wet at the thought, and he wiped at his mouth after a long sigh.

He reached to his pocket in search of the coin that Paul had given him, but remembered that he’d given it to Rosemary. Even though the symbolic coin didn’t belong to him, he still longed for the strength it would give him. Addiction was a never-ending curse, and one that required a large reservoir of will to overcome. His will had faded since learning of Debbie’s betrayal.

His five year relationship with Debbie had never been easy. She was bombastic, commanding, and quick to anger, but Jacker’s mother had been the same way, and he learned that behind the hardest exterior often lay the kindest heart. Debbie’s outward hostility was a defense mechanism, and Jacker was able to break it down and reach the kind-hearted woman within.

But that was all over now.

Her decision to sleep with her co-worker had been exactly what Jacker needed to fall back into old habits. At first, he’d only planned on taking a single hit, but any addict could attest to how falling for that same old lie almost guaranteed a binge. The next one always promised to be the last moments before succumbing, and it rarely ever was.

Jacker’s
binge had eased his anger over what Debbie had done, but only while he was high. Each time his high lost its edge, his anger returned, and it always seemed more intense than it had been before. By the time his binge was reaching its end, his sober moments were filled with blind rage. He’d been staying with his dealer, and hadn’t returned home since discovering what Debbie had done. But during a break between doses, his rage grew to the point that he began punching holes in his dealer’s walls. That signaled a forced end to his binge, and left him dealing with his anger without any respite. He exploded at work, and was promptly fired, and that’s when he began to plan his revenge.

He never hit Debbie, and would never allow himself to, but he needed an outlet for his rage. He wasn’t even sure how he ended up at Debbie’s work, or by what luck, or lack thereof, he found her partner in the alley behind the grocery store, but the confluence of events led him to confront the young man, leading to a violent altercation that sent
Jacker fleeing and Debbie’s lover bleeding and unconscious.

Jacker
had been Paul’s sponsor in their support group, but the two had developed a close friendship over the past few months. Paul promised to help in any way he could, but he was dealing with his own issues at the moment after being fired from his job. They spent a long evening drinking and ruminating on their bad luck. Jacker had lost his job, his girlfriend, and was on the run from the law. Paul had also lost his job, fought endlessly with his girlfriend, and pined for an old girlfriend that wanted nothing to do with him. They drowned their sorrow in alcohol that night, and laughed at how bleak each of their future’s looked. Little did they know how things were just about to get so much worse.

Except that Paul had Alma now.

A twinge of jealousy shot through Jacker at the thought. He hated himself for it, but Jacker had enjoyed knowing that Paul was just as down and out as he was. Now that Paul had Alma again, things were looking up for his friend. Meanwhile, Jacker was continuing his downward spiral.

“Fuck me,” said
Jacker as he stared at the spinning moths around the fading light.

He was so tired that the walls looked like they were moving, and as he leaned against the van it started to feel like he was sinking into it. He was reminded of being on acid, where solid objects could suddenly take on the appearance of a sheet with snakes slithering beneath. As he stared at the moths, the wall around the flickering light began to quiver. The shadows of the moths were growing larger and longer than they should be, as if they were also being affected by the wavering wall.

“What in the hell?”

Jacker
took a step closer as the shadows on the wall grew. It looked like the moths were drawing black lines on the walls with their shadows, but then the path they carved began to move on their own. The twisting shadows struck terror in Jacker and he rubbed his eyes to see if this was an illusion. Was he experiencing a flashback? He’d often heard legends of drug-users being struck by flashbacks days or even weeks after using. Was that what was happening?

The black shadows twisted and grew, but then the light finally faded away, failing like it had been threatening to do for a long time. Now the whole wall was merely a shadow, but he could still see movement within it, as if there was something darker than the shadows moving in front of him.

Inside
Cada E.I.B.’s facility

March 13
th
, 2012

Shortly before 6:00 AM

Stephen was walking in front of his wife, and he was using the viewfinder on his camera, utilizing the night vision to get a better view of what lie ahead. Rachel had a flashlight, but was using it to watch behind them.

Rosemary had given them directions to Oliver’s lab, and explained that the emergency doors in the facility were temporarily disabled. However, they would have to take the stairs down because the elevator required a key to access the bottom floor. Paul explained that it wouldn’t do any good to argue with Rosemary about how she could know so much about the building, and that she’d been using her ability to ‘know’ things during their entire trip out to Branson.

The
Cada E.I.B. facility was as quiet as a tomb, and the clack of Rachel’s shoes echoed through the halls. Stephen stopped and said, “Take off those shoes. We sound about as subtle as a drum line.”

Rachel groaned, but did as he asked. Without her shoes on she barely reached up to Stephen’s shoulders as she stayed close behind him.

“How the fuck did we get roped into this?” asked Rachel.

“Babe, this whole thing might suck now, but when we get this story out…” he shook his head and whistled. “It’s going to be huge.”

“It won’t do us a hell of a lot of good if we’re dead.”

Stephen didn’t offer a retort. He just nodded and said, “True. So let’s not go dying. Rosemary said the stairs were by the elevators. Do you see them?”

“Yes,” said Rachel as she used the flashlight to point over to a nearby door. “Right there.”

They went over to the door and Stephen turned the camera to Rachel so that she was looking at the lens. She stared at him, her eyes showing as large, green globes in the viewfinder, and he asked her, “Are you ready, Mrs. Knight?”

She glowered and shook her head. “No, not really.”

“Are you scared?”

“Of course I am. Why? What’s with you? Why are you asking stupid questions?”

“I’m just trying to help the people that watch this get a better idea of how we’re feeling.”

“You’re taping?” asked Rachel, surprised and annoyed.

“Of course I’m taping. I’ve been taping everything. I’m not letting any of this get lost.”

“I thought a red light or something would blink when you were taping.”

“Not if you shut it off,” said Stephen. “I’m not risking Rosemary or any of the others freaking out on us and making us shut it off. Fuck that. This is too important.”

“Great,” said Rachel. “I’m sure they’ll be super happy when they find out you’ve been recording so much.”

Stephen had his hand on the door’s bar when he lowered the camera and sneered at his wife. They could see each other faintly by the light of her flashlight as she scanned the area. “Babe, this whole thing is too big a story to worry about what they think. Forgive me, but if they try to stop us from getting this story out there…” He laughed and said bluntly, “Fuck them. I’m not
even thinking about money, or our website, or anything else other than how fucking huge this is. People need to know what happened in this town.”

“What happened?” asked Rachel. “Do you know?
Because I sure as hell don’t. I’m still trying to sort out what was real and what was a dream. I’m not even sure I know anymore. And plus, I’m exhausted. I’m not even sleepy, but totally exhausted. My hands are shaking, and my stomach is upset. I just want to get out of this place.”

“I offered you my pills. You’re the one that didn’t want to take them.”

“Are we seriously going to start fighting about that again?” asked Rachel. She pointed her flashlight at the door to the stairs and said, “Let’s just get a move on.”

Stephen raised the camera again and started recording as they opened the door to the stairwell and headed down. Rachel was about to follow when she caught sight of something on the floor.

“Hey, look,” she said as she shined the light at the tile.

Stephen looked down with the camera, but the glare from the flashlight muddied the picture. When he looked past the viewfinder and directly at the floor he saw that Rachel had noticed a smear of what might be mud, or blood, or both.

“Is that blood?” asked Rachel.

“Some of it looks like mud,” said Stephen. “But that’s blood,” he pointed at a reddish-brown streak. “Paul shot the dude in the foot, so we can probably follow the trail to him.”

“Rosemary was pretty confident this guy would be in his lab,” said Rachel.

“Yeah, well, maybe the blood leads there.
Only one way to find out.” Stephen smiled and raised his eyebrows.

Rachel sighed and said, “You’re enjoying this way too much.”

“Of course I am,” said Stephen. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m freaked out too, but our trip out here has been better than I could’ve ever hoped. We’re not just proving that supernatural beings exist, we made contact with them.”

“Yeah, and I don’t want to do it again,” said Rachel. “I don’t want any of this. I don’t want the site. I don’t want the show. I don’t want any of it. I just want to go back to how things were before we came here.”

“Are you insane?” asked Stephen. “You want to go back to being a local news reporter making thirty grand a year? With what we’ve found out here, we’re going to be millionaires.”

“I liked my job,” said Rachel. “Sure, the pay wasn’t great, but people around town were getting to know me, and who knows what might’ve happened if I’d stayed there. All of the anchors at the station started as field reporters.”

“Come on, babe,” said Stephen with a dismissive roll of his eyes. “They fed all you reporters that same line of bullshit. It’s how they get you to put up with all of their crap. They tell you that if you ever want to be an anchor, you’ve got to go through the field reporter duty, but what they don’t tell you is that the anchors keep their jobs for decades, and when it comes time to hire a new one, experience isn’t what counts. They’ll give that job to anyone that’s good looking and can read a teleprompter. They chew up and spit out girls like you by the dozen. They make you think you’re destined for the anchor’s seat, and then send you out on bullshit assignments over and over so the viewers can gawk at your tits.”

“Nice,” said Rachel.
“Real nice, asshole.”

“Hey, I’m just telling the truth. I saved you from years of dealing with bullshit and false promises from those people.”

“You can be a real piece of shit sometimes. You know that?” asked Rachel as she walked past her husband and started to head down the stairs.

“How so?” asked Stephen as he followed behind his
wife. “Because I’m always looking out for you? Because I’m always looking out for our future?”

“No,” said Rachel as she stopped on the stairs and turned to face him. She shined her flashlight in his eyes. He cringed and held his arm up to block the light. “Because you’re always trying to manipulate people into doing what’s good for you, and not necessarily what’s good for them. You never even once asked me if I wanted to stay at the station. You always just talked about how stupid I was for staying there, and how I could make so much more money if I did this stupid fucking paranormal site with you.”

“And I was right,” said Stephen, flabbergasted by his wife’s anger.

“But I don’t want this. I don’t want any of this. I was happy with my job. And, like an idiot, I let you convince me to quit.”

Stephen nodded as he calmly said, “I get it. I get what’s up. You’re just tired and freaked out about everything. That’s understandable. But you’ve got to see that we made the right choice. This story is going to change our lives.”

“Did you make the right choice for Aubrey?” asked Rachel.