Broken Souls (The Chronicles of Mara Lantern, Book 2) (21 page)

Melanie responded, “No, in this place, I am dead, buried, long forgotten.”

Diana leaned forward from the other armchair across the room, beginning to reach for her son.

Denton raised a hand, shook his head and mouthed the word
don’t
. He held out a flattened hand and lowered it in the air, as if commanding calm.

Diana widened her eyes in frustration but sat back with a worried frown.

Sam said, “Not anymore. This is my world, my life, my family.”

“Where do I belong?” Melanie said, mocking Sam with his own voice.

“Shut up! Nothing is going to take me away from here. This is where I belong.”

“They are ashamed of me.”

Sam didn’t respond.

“One day they will change their minds, and they will send me away, back to the place with filth and disease and starvation and darkness.”

Sam trembled and a tear rolled down his cheek.

“And you will never see them again.”

Sam leaned back, tried to pull away from the eyes that stared back at him, from the voice that he could never escape.

“And you’re father will never accept you.”

Sam blinked away the water that pooled above his lids, gritted his teeth, causing a muscle to protrude along his jaw line and a vein to bulge along his neck. “You can’t say that! I won’t let you. This is my home and my family and I will not let anyone take them away.”

Melanie’s head lolled forward, lying on her chest.

Confused, Sam sat still, looking at the top of her head, wondering if he should pull away from the hands that continued to hold his face. Just as he was about to, Melanie raised her head. She had a broad smile on her face.

In her own voice, she said, “A jelly bean will break your heart.”

Sam sniffled a little and said, “What? That makes no sense. You said I’ll never see my family again, that my father will never accept me and now you’re talking about jelly beans.”

“Those are your words, your doubts. Not mine.”

“So my father will accept me?”

“Not before you know what it is to be one.”

“One what? A jelly bean?” Sam’s face reddened in frustration.

Melanie smiled and said, “No, a father.”

She slowly closed her eyes and dropped her hands from Sam’s cheeks.

As Mara walked into the shop, she was a little disappointed that Sam followed her in, hoping he would head directly over to the bakery to spend time with Ping before going to the tutor’s house. She made a point of looking preoccupied and getting ready to work, thinking that eventually he would get the hint. After hanging up her coat and walking into the back office to get the till, she walked up behind the counter and found a stack of small boxes sitting next to the register. Parts for rebuilding Buddy’s smashed phone. Actually parts for constructing a new phone that looked like Buddy’s old destroyed phone. Come to think of it, it’s surprising Buddy wasn’t waiting out front when they arrived. He’s usually not patient while waiting for repairs to the phone he purportedly uses to talk to his dead father.

“So what do you think Mrs. Proctor meant about Dad not accepting me until I know what it is to be a father?” Sam asked.

“People are going to start avoiding you if you don’t let up on the daddy complex,” Mara said. “Clearly she thinks you may be grown up with kids of your own before Dad accepts you as his son.”

“Well, who needs a father after they are grown up? Don’t you think that sucks?”

“We don’t even know what kind of accuracy rate Melanie has. For all we know, she could be blowing smoke up our backsides. There may be nothing at all to what she says.”

“There’s something going on there. She’s got some kind of ability. That was my voice coming out of her, and I have thought some of those things about being here in this realm.”

“Anybody with half a brain could have guessed you’d have doubts about being secure in this realm. That’s human nature—assuming people from your realm are actually human.” Mara unpacked the tiny boxes, laying pieces of plastic and electronics on the counter.

“
Funny
. Seriously I found the whole thing a little disturbing, what with jellybeans and being rejected by my father. What is a jelly bean anyway?”

Mara paused unpacking and looked up at him. “Sam, I understand how Melanie can give you the heebie-jeebies—I’ve been there—but you can’t let it get to you. Now I need you to scoot along so I can get some work done.”

Sam turned toward the door. “O-kay.”

“Sam?”

“Yeah?”

“I can’t make you any promises about how Dad will respond to you when that time comes, but you can stop having doubts about me and Mom. We’re not letting you go anywhere. Understand?”

“Yeah, sis. I understand.” He smiled and left.

* * *

After hitting Send on the text to Abby, letting her know that Mara was ready to talk whenever she was, Mara set down the phone on the counter and picked up Buddy’s newly built antiquated phone. Mara placed it in a little plastic basket and slid it onto a shelf under the counter. It was almost noon, and Buddy still hadn’t checked in on the phone.
Strange. Maybe he was growing attached to the replacement Mara had given him
.

Her own phone emitted a tone and vibrated on the counter. Abby must be ready to talk. Mara grabbed her phone and tapped it. No, it was a text message from Detective Bohannon:
Freezing me out again? Watch this.
It was followed by a link to a private file-sharing Web site.

Mara assumed it was another video of a Flight 559 passenger encountering some counterpart DNA and exploding. Not wanting to watch it on her phone’s smaller screen, she walked into the back office and sat in front of the computer. Holding up her phone with one hand, she launched the browser with the mouse and then pecked the link’s Web address on the keyboard with a single finger. After hitting Enter, the screen froze for a second before loading the media player.
Yep, a video. Ten to one, it’s an exploding passenger from another dimension
.

Once the video played, it displayed the view from what was clearly a bank security camera mounted near the ceiling in the lobby. In the foreground, a man stood at a counter presumably filling out a deposit slip. The teller windows were off to his right where a few customers waited in line. Directly across the lobby some sort of altercation was happening.

Mara squinted and saw what appeared to be two men who had to be twins looking at each other. More than twins, they looked like reflections of each other. Even their clothes were identical. The only differences between them were their expressions. The one on the right looked shocked and baffled. The one on the left looked guilty and scared, and he carried a bulky briefcase that clearly pulled on his arm. Since there was no sound, Mara had to take cues from the men’s movements. Baffled Guy seemed to notice the briefcase, pointing and yelling. After a guard walked up and took Guilty Guy by the arm, Guilty Guy swung the briefcase, knocking the other two men over a desk. He made a run for the door.

After opening the door slightly, he stopped and slapped himself on the neck, as if he’d gotten bitten or stung. The video resolution was too low to see what it was. He turned toward the customer standing at the counter in the lobby, looking at him and saying something, clearly in a panic. From this angle it looked like the man at the counter might have subtly nodded his head, but since the camera was angled down and behind him, Mara couldn’t be sure.

Why is Bohannon sending me bank robbery footage?
Mara reached for the mouse, planning to close the window on the screen when Guilty Guy turned dark gray and
hairy
. Then his eyes bulged out of his head, growing so large that they nearly engulfed all his features. When the black pincers ripped through his jawline and viscera started dripping onto the carpet, Mara hit Pause.

“Oh, that’s so gross.” She picked up the phone on the desk and dialed the bakery next door. After one ring, Ping picked up. “What are you doing right now?”

“I was getting ready to eat some lunch back in the break room. Want to join me?” Ping asked.

“No. Can you come over here? I have something to show you, and you can leave your lunch there. I don’t think you’ll be wanting it after this.”

“I’m intrigued. On my way.”

“I’m in the office.”

When Ping joined her, Mara had already backed up the video to the beginning. She pointed to the chair beside her, and he sat down.

“This is a video Bohannon sent. I’ve only seen the first few minutes of it, so I’m not sure how this ends up, but it seemed like something I wouldn’t want to experience by myself.”

“I’m so glad we can share these moments,” Ping said.

“You are starting to sound like me.” She clicked the Play button.

They were silent until the pincers came out of Guilty Guy’s face, and Mara said, “This is as far as I got.”

Then midsection appendages ripped through the man’s shirt and stripped off his human flesh onto the lobby floor.

Mara cringed and looked away.

Ping said, “This must be reminiscent of your encounter when Special Agent Suter revealed his true self to you at the office park near the airport.”

“No, this is worse. Well, no, being there is worse. But this is definitely messier.” She could only look at the screen out of the corner of her eye. Somehow that made it easier to keep her stomach from roiling. “Oh, Ping, those are compound eyes! And he sprouted antennae. I wonder if those work?”

The creature on the screen scraped its own back and eventually freed its shoulder blades, which quickly expanded and spread out into a huge pair of wings.

Ping grimaced. “I find insects very distasteful. You were right. I’ve lost my appetite.”

“It’s turning toward that security guard and that guy on the cell phone, the ones he knocked over the desk earlier. Oh, I can’t watch this,” Mara said, turning away.

“He’s shooting it. The guard is firing at the creature,” Ping said.

Mara turned to look.

On the screen the security guard’s extended arm held out a gun that jerked upward several times, silently recoiling each time he fired. The insect-thing in front of him flapped and spasmed, falling off its legs onto its side, all six appendages writhing, kicking toward the tellers’ counter while its wings battered the front door.

Another shot exploded into one of the huge eyes, spattering gelatinous material all over the carpet.

The last shot went wide, striking the customer standing in the foreground of the video, the one at the counter in the lobby filling out a deposit slip, directly in the center of the head. He collapsed into a heap of ashes, leaving a misty black residue floating in the air where his body stood.

Ping leaned forward and pointed at the screen. “Did you see that? What is that?”

The black mist spread out before the camera like a fog riding weak currents of air, growing thinner and thinner by the minute.

From across the room, the guard ran toward the camera, dodging the remains of the giant dead bug, which had stopped kicking and twitching. He stopped behind the check-writing counter and looked down at his feet. Bending over, he scooped up a handful of ash and let it slip through his fingers. Once it had all fallen back to the floor, the guard held in his palm a blackened bullet. He looked around, guilty and confused, but he seemed unaware that the black residue was curling around his head, seeping into his ears, nose and mouth. For a moment, the guard’s features were not discernible through the black haze that engulfed him. Then, as the fog slithered into his body and disappeared, his face became visible, and his irises turned as black and bright as hot tar.

Mara’s phone rang.

She clicked Pause, and the frame froze with the guard’s blackened eyes staring up at the camera. Glancing down at her hand, she rolled her eyes and leaned back. She turned her phone toward Ping. It read Bohannon.

“He didn’t even give me time to get through the entire video before calling,” she said. She tapped the screen. “Hello, Detective.”

“I see on my account that someone clicked the link I sent you. Since you answered my call, I’m assuming it was you,” Bohannon said.

“Let me put you on Speakerphone. I’m here in the office with Ping.” She put her phone on the desk. “We are watching the video right now. It’s almost to the end. The guard is looking at us with those weird black eyes.”

“You haven’t seen the big finish then. Go ahead, and I’ll hold,” Bohannon said.

Mara looked askance at Ping. “Do I want to see anymore?”

Ping nodded and pointed to the mouse. She reached over and clicked.

On the screen, the bank security guard snapped into a ramrod stance, and his blackened eyes widened as if in pain. The screen when out of focus and blurred into a double exposure. A transparent ghost image of the guard slid to the right and separated from his body. The solid version of the guard staggered to the left, holding out his arms for balance. Meanwhile the transparent image remained upright, gazed after him with a look of surprise. The ghostly guard stepped toward his solid counterpart, reached out to grab him, but his ephemeral hand passed through a shoulder as if it were air. The guard regained his balance, straightened his shirt and turned to walk back across the bank lobby as rescue workers flooded in the front door. He left his ghost standing over a pile of ashes next to the check-writing counter.

After a moment, the ghostly image floated out of the frame, and the video ended.

“Don’t tell me. Bug Man was a passenger on my flight to San Francisco,” Mara said, looking down at the tiny flat-panel screen sitting on her desk.

A little too loudly from the phone’s Speaker, Bohannon said, “To be honest with you, I’m not completely sure who Bug Man was. Before he started turning into a giant insect, he looked exactly like the bank manager, a guy named Chris Bartolucci. You can see that at the beginning of the video—there are two of them standing over by that desk in the background. I’m guessing he might be a dermatologist named Mervin Mourissey, but I don’t have any real evidence to back that up.”