Psycho Within Us (The Psycho Series Book 2) (30 page)

“Formless things, kind of like what took Mrs. Cartwright, I think.  I don’t know.  I’ve…I’ve kind of forgotten whatever it was that took her.  It’s like it…”  She trailed off, then came back.  “It has no form.  No shape like we’re used to.  It…um…folded in on itself…and I think that’s what I’m seeing.  And what I’m hearing.  Like…a
fight
?” she said, looking the question at Spencer in the rearview.  “They’re all working together to get out, but they’re also fighting to see who the alpha is.  But I already know who it is.”

Spencer took another toke.  “Who is it?”

“It’s the big one, the Prisoner.  He wants out.  He was put there…by…I dunno, just someone else.”  Kaley closed her eyes, shook her head as if trying to shake away a fog or a bothersome hangover.  “He’s been there for a long, long time.  Spencer…it’s all he’s ever wanted.”

Spencer took another toke.  “What is?”

“To get out,” she said.  “He’s, um…like…not
from
there.  He’s from somewhere else, but he was tossed into this bad place, into the Deep…and he’s learned how to navigate it.  He’s used the Others, formed several revolutions against the Gatekeepers, always learning from his mistakes and getting stronger.  He’s devoured the ones he’s fought, and it’s made him stronger.”

Spencer took another toke.  He was wondering how much of this was in her mind, and how much of it was actually real.  He was also wondering if it mattered.  Whatever had happened seven months ago in that house on Avery Street, it had been real enough.  Whether it was a door that had opened between planes, or it was a door opened into the mind of a frightened, powerful little girl who unleashed
her
notion of Hell upon the world, made little difference.  What mattered was this:
Can she control it long enough to keep the Prisoner, and these Others, in their cells?

Spencer took another toke, and exhaled thoughtfully.  He was almost finished with the Sobranie.  Another car went swishing by.
He only got a quick look at it; it looked like a Lada Priora, one of the Russian sedans, a dark-green or dark-blue one.  The headlights coming his way had obscured it, but he got a brief glimpse of the driver.  Older fellow, blonde hair, with a chiseled brow, black gloves and an overcoat.  Might have been looking at Spencer directly as he drove by, or might not have been.

The windshield wipers were working hard, just not hard enough.  An eternity of snowflakes came racing towards the headlights, and to Spencer it looked like how the stars raced by the starship
Enterprise
whenever they hit maximum warp speed on the show.  “That it?” he said.  “That’s all you see an’ hear?”

“Isn’t that enough?” she mumbled, and looked over at the boy with concern.

Spencer took a second to search for any kind of ashtray, found none, rolled the window down just enough to toss his cig out, and then lit another one.  A large truck was coming their way, an eighteen-wheeler that slashed by, throwing a quick wash of water over the whole SUV.  The Subaru slid and hydroplaned for a moment.  Spencer put the Sobranie between his lips and used both hands to correct, then finished his toke.  “This Prisoner, what’s he like?”

Kaley shrugged.  “I don’t know.”

But she did know.  Spencer knew it, and he was never wrong about people, especially not about this one.  By blocking his thoughts leaking into hers, Kaley had managed to block her thoughts from leaking into his, but she couldn’t keep
everything
from leaking through, much like, he suspected, she couldn’t quite keep this “Prisoner” and his other world from dabbling into her realm.  “Come on,” Spencer said, taking another toke.  “Talk to me.”

Kaley said, “I don’t wanna talk about it.”

“I got a kid in the back seat that I don’t mind murdering, or leaving him on the side o’ the road to freeze to death, and at the moment he’s not saying a damn thing to me about At-ta Biral, which makes me think he’s already pretty useless.”  He glanced at her in the rearview mirror.  “Don’t you go gettin’ useless on me, too, little girl.”

She looked away from him, out the window.  Her breath fogged it for a few seconds, and she just stared at the darkening woods all around them.  Finally, she said, “He’s…big.”

“How big?”

“I don’t know.  I just saw part of him when he…he, um…he killed Mrs. Cartwright.”

Spencer paused midway through his toke.  “Whattaya mean, ‘when he killed Mrs. Cartwright?’  Who the fuck is Mrs. Cartwright?”

“My math teacher.”

Spencer raised an eyebrow.  “He killed her?”  Kaley nodded without looking at him.  “You
saw
this?”  Another nod, this one more shameful.  The apparition girl wiped the apparition tear from her apparition eyes.  Spencer put on the brakes, slowed the Forester down until he finally came to a halt in the middle of the empty road, and turned around in his seat to look directly at Kaley.  This got her attention.  “How did he kill her?”

She swallowed.  “He…
h-he came through the floor.  Through the water on the floor.”

“He came through?  Into
our world?  Into your school?”

“Into the bathroom, yeah.  I was alone in there, and I guess Mrs. Cartwright just wanted to check on me.  She came in and…”  She closed her eyes against whatever horrific memory tormented her.

Spencer didn’t care for any of that.  “What did you see?  Describe exactly what you saw.”

“I can’t remember,” she sobbed.  The boy now slowly turned to look at her.  Something had piqued his interest. 
Weakness recognizing weakness
, Spencer thought.  The stupid looks of empathetic people always bothered him, and sometimes made him a little nauseous.  “It was so…it was all over so fast and…there was this large black thing coming out of the floor, like a squid but with tentacles that didn’t make sense…it…it, like, it…it
ate itself
, or folded in on itself, then vomited itself back up.  It was…it was like looking at something impossible.”  She shook her head, wiped her tears, and sniffled.  “I don’t know how else to say it.”

Spencer looked at her a beat longer, then turned around in his seat and took another toke.  He exhaled slowly, pondering,
all while watching another car go by, this one a white Mini crawling along at less than ten miles an hour.  An elderly man was at the wheel.  In the back seat were two children.  Not far behind the Mini was a truck, and behind that another truck.  The road was getting more populated.  The city of Chelyabinsk was just up ahead, he could see the tops of buildings started to crest over the treetops.  “Get that kid talkin’,” he said, putting the Subaru back into drive and getting underway again.  “At-ta Biral!  You understand?  Eight Cats.  What’s up?  Ya know where we can find ’em?”

Kaley gave him a fiery look, and for a moment Spencer thought she was going to admonish him again for trying to push the boy.  If she did, he might just put a hole in the kid’s head right
then and there.  He was in that kind of mood.  She’d already delayed him and nearly gotten him killed, all just to lug this brat along.

Perhaps the little girl sensed this charged animosity, because she finally turned to the boy and said, “What’s your name, sweetie?”  No answer.  “Where do you come from?  Where’s your family?”  More silence.  Spencer blew out a line of smoke and looked at the boy squarely through the rearview mirror.  The boy happened to look up, locked eyes with Spencer for just a moment.

“Peter,” the boy mumbled.  “My name’s Peter.”

For a moment, the three of them went silent.

Kaley smiled at him encouragingly.  “Where are you from, Peter?”

He licked his lips. 
“Y-Yorkshire.”

“Yorkshire,” Spencer said.  “That’s like, what, Northern England or some shit, right?”  The boy nodded, and looked out his window.  “How’d you end up out here?”  No answer.  “Talk to me, boy, or else you’ll wish I’d left you in that basement.”

“Spencer,” Kaley said warningly.

“You too, bitch.  Hush up.”

The boy said, “I-I was, uh, j-just out walking.  I got up and opened my window…climbed out while my parents were still asleep.  I was going to my best friend Jared’s house.  He had the new
Assassin’s Creed
game, and I w-wanted to play it.  I cut through the park.  And…a car.  There was a car following me.  Moving slow right behind me the whole time.”  He swallowed hard.  “Th-then a man got out and just ran at me.  I just remember…a rag put over my face.  I squirmed and fought, and I got away, at least at first.  I was screaming, but nobody heard me.  Everybody was asleep.  Then…I don’t know, the rag was put over my face again.  Then I was in some basement with two other boys…and a girl.  We had toys to play with.  Me and the boys tried to scratch at the door and fit through a vent, but the girl just sat in the corner and stared at the wall.”

The boy went silent for a time.  Spencer slowed down for the first stoplight.  The Subaru slid a bit—the water was refreezing on the roads, and the snow was piling higher across it.  Presumably, the salt trucks weren’t running up this way, at least not anymore tonight.  Spencer watched the cars going by, looking carefully at the drivers.  He took a toke, exhaled
, and stared at the red stoplight.  “How long ago was this?”

“I don’t know,” the boy said.

“Best guess.”

More silence.  The boy shrugged.  “A f
-f-few months?”

“What happened durin’ that time?”

“Please don’t rush him, Spencer.”  He looked at Kaley warningly.  “I said
please
.”

“They…they, um…” 
Peter trailed off.  Looked out the window.  Wiped his eyes.  Sniffed.

Kaley leaned over, but couldn’t touch him.  “It’s okay, sweetie.  It’s okay.  I know.  I’ve been through it before.  Me and my sister both.”  The boy turned to look at her.
  Ahead, the light turned green and Spencer slowly applied the gas, taking a left towards the turnpike that would take them to M-51, the main highway into Chelyabinsk.  “You don’t have to go through all the bad stuff.  We know they hurt you.  All we need is some information so that we can tell the police, so that these people never hurt anybody again.”  She added, “We can catch them, Peter.”

Spencer looked in rearview mirror again.  The boy was coming around.  Spencer’s way of threatening him would’ve worked, too,
he wagered, but Kaley’s method was getting it done her way so why mess with success?  He could see the kid about to open up.  Peter wanted the bad people caught, but more than anything he wanted to go home.  Spencer believed he saw this in his eyes, and he was never wrong about people, not even children.

“We stayed in their basement for a long time,” Peter said. 
“But I don’t know how long.  They came for me and the two boys, took us away.”

“What about the one girl?”

“They took her a couple days before.  She never came back.”  Now, some streetlights were appearing at regular intervals along the side of the road, here and there a gas station (
Petrol station
, Spencer thought, thinking of Zakhar). 

The lights were bringing Peter and Kaley in and out of shadows.  One streetlight swished by, bathing them in a pale
yellow glow, and then the car went dark again.  This happened a few more times.  Spencer glanced at the two kids in the rearview mirror, and as the boy spoke, he could swear he saw something moving in the back seat, something crawling around in the darkness.

Spencer
took another toke, relished it, exhaled slowly, and smiled.

The Subaru Forester was infested with a far-reaching evil.  Kaley felt it permeating every corner.  It didn’t matter how far she traveled, not at her school and not here in Siberia.  It didn’t matter how fast the Subaru went.  It didn’t even matter that she was in two places at once.  The tear in the fabric between her world and the Deep was wherever
she
was.  It moved with her, in both places, yet both of those places (Cartersville and Siberia) were
one
as far as the Prisoner and his Others were concerned.  At least, that was her best guess.

The
little SUV slid and coasted, then steadied.  Kaley never took her eyes off the boy, partly because he required a focused outpouring of courage from her, and partly because it took her attention off the swarm of things she knew was feeling their way through the waters.  “After they took you out of the basement, where did you go next?” she asked.

“To a car.  A red one…don’t know what kind.  We drove for
a long time.”  Peter now spoke in a daze.  He was almost adorable in his oversized clothes, but that face of his, it looked like what Kaley had seen in pictures where people came stepping out of a shelter after a bombing raid, shocked to the marrow of their bones, their minds stunned to the point of dumb inaction.  Kaley could not control most of her powers, but she could control the one that alleviated pain and appeased suffering.  At least she was good for that much.

“Where did they take you?”

“T-to a big place, like a warehouse.  We stayed there a couple of days.  Then, they put us in a van, and w-w-we didn’t come out of the van for a day…maybe two days, I dunno.  They fed us, stopped in the woods where we could pee, and then handed us off to…some other people.  They drove us to some docks somewhere.  I was so tired and sleepy, but they kept us in the back of the van, watched by a man with a gun.  At the docks…they…”  He swallowed.  “They put us in a large steel box, like the big boats carry.  There were six others in there…they fed us, but then we just…I felt so tired, and I fell asleep.”