Psycho Within Us (The Psycho Series Book 2) (41 page)

The
trunk shut, Shcherbakov went back to the Subaru, did a brief check.  A single pair of footprints led away away from the driver’s side.  He checked the ignition switch—
Took the car keys, so he’s still thinking
.  He reached into his jacket pocket and removed the silencer, twisted it on the tip of his Makarov, and fired two shots into the steering column around the ignition.

Shcherbakov continued his search. 
There was a case in the back that looked fit to carry a rifle, and it was empty.  A few remaining shotgun shells told the rest of the story. 
Armed with something powerful, with a wide spread
.  That would determine how he dealt with his opponent if there was an exchange of fire.  If he played this right, though, it shouldn’t come to that.

The Grey Wolf jogged over to the chain-link fence, following the footprints.  He removed his coat, threw it over the razor wire and climbed over.  When he tried to pull his jacket down,
though, it wouldn’t come.  It was too hung up in the twisted razor wire. 
So be it
.  He turned and moved slowly down the hill.  The tracks left in the snow were deep.  This was almost too easy.

He took out his phone, hit the speed dial.  “Yes?” Zverev said seconds later.

“The docks.  He’s here.  Send back up.  I’ll stall him here if he tries to leave.”

Kaley had witnessed unconscionable acts before, and it wasn’t getting any easier seeing more.  As a matter of fact, it was getting harder.

The oldest of the girls looked Kaley’s age, maybe a little older.  She felt the truth roiling off of them immediately. 
She knew what they were, and why they were here.  Fear, of course, dominated all, but that was only the cumulative effect.  The foundation of that fear began with dashed hopes and broken promises.  Then came the loss of innocence, which led to feeling as if they had deserved this, and then, inevitably, to hopeless resignation.  Resignation, because they held no hope of anyone coming for them.  They weren’t cared for, they didn’t have the…the…the
roots
of love.  The seeds hadn’t been planted by any caring adult, and they therefore had nothing better to compare their lives to.  They didn’t know the world could be any better than this.  For others, perhaps, but never for them.

Four girls and one boy, all of them so young. 
A couple of them battered.  The living space they occupied wasn’t unlike what had been set up for Kaley and her sister in Dmitry’s basement.  A shower, a toilet with only a curtain around it, a wooden table with four Naugahyde chairs, a small refrigerator, a sink, a small dresser with clothes hanging out of the top drawer, and three beds barely big enough to fit any of them.

They looked at her, three of them doe-eyed, as they had just woken up f
rom their pallets on the floor.  The boy and one of the girls had mismatched cards in their hands, Apples to Apples and Uno cards, and had pushed away from the table in surprise when she entered.  The boy gasped, the girl screeched, and the other three girls had leapt up in alarm.  The girl at the table had a swollen lip, and one of the girls who jumped out of bed had a black eye.  The boy had bruises up and down his arms where someone had squeezed.

Runaways
. 
Strays
. 
Plucked off the streets, maybe lured by some promise of food and shelter, maybe a new boyfriend acting as a savior but was secretly a pimp, or possibly just straight up snatched the way me and Shan were
.

Doubtless, whichever scenario had brought them here, most of them had been selected because no one was coming to search for them.  Not
really
search.  Probably each of them was from an impoverished neighborhood, where nobody really investigated cases of missing children.  In those kinds of places—like the Bluff—kids that went missing were just fucking gone.

That such a culture could exist that not only allow
ed, but propagate the handling of children like this was enough to boggle the mind.  The world and ethos that these traffickers created and wallowed in…
It would make a pig puke
.

The hopelessness
in the little room was such that Kaley staggered back.  Her eyes watered, not out of sadness, but as an instinctive reaction to malodorous emotions.  So powerful and oppressive.  It would be easy to just sit down here, join in their sorrow. 
Misery loves company
, she thought. 
It’s so much easier
…
so much easier to just sit down and join them
. 
Better that than go back out into the world with hope, only to find that there is no way out
.

So potent, despair.  The most potent of all emotions, she was finding.  And i
f not for the man running up the stairs behind her, Kaley might have lay down and quit moving forever.

A hammering at
the door.  “Hey!  You in there, little girl?”

The water churned angrily around her.  Kaley was aware on some level that she was doing this.  The things that were swimming about, they knew it, too.

“
We may not need him, after all
,” said the Prisoner.  “
Something’s happening
. 
Can you see it?  She’s opening it wider for us
.”

The gunshots
had terrified the five kids, all of whom ran to the other side of the stinking room.  Kaley didn’t move.  For whatever reason, the sound of Spencer’s shotgun blowing off the hinges of the door didn’t upset her. 
How can someone do this?
she thought, even as the door behind her was kicked open and passed through her.  Spencer entered, walked straight through her, aiming his shotgun around at the kids like he suspected them of some trap. 
He suspects everyone
.

The children just stood there
. 
They don’t run
, she mused.  Indeed, the children all stood up straight, awaiting their fate.  The gunshots had stunned them, as had Spencer walking straight through her.  Before that, their entire lives had been one rude awakening after another. 
Shocked?  Sure
. 
But they’re used to it, and they get over it quickly
. 
Plus, they’re children
. 
They accept impossible things far faster than adults
.

And
what about the man with the shotgun?  For all they know, just another tormentor here to move them from one place to another, just like Peter had seen done to the girl in the basement where he was kept, and just as he himself had been shuffled around.

“Kaley,” Ms. Hurgess was saying.  “You know I don’t like seeing you shade with your fingers.  Don’t
smear the lead, learn how to shade naturally.  Let me show you how I hold the pencil when I want to do gradients.”

“Yes ma’am,” she said
numbly, handing over her pencil.

“What did you say?” Spencer said.  He looked at her, then made a face.  “Oh, right, talkin’ to someone else.  Anyways, we gotta get outta here.”

“We’re taking them with us.”

“What, sweetie?” said Ms. Burgess.

“The
shit
you say,” Spencer protested.

To Ms. Hurgess, Kaley replied, “I said I’m taking my time with this.”

“Oh.”  She looked a little befuddled.  “Well, that’s fine.  You’ve still got three more days before you have to turn this project in.”

“That
SUV may be built for a family,” Spencer informed her.  “But I ain’t interested in gatherin’ no family.  I ain’t taking these little shits with us.  You can forget that right now.”

Ms. Hurgess had taken Kaley’s Utrecht pencil, putting it delicately between thumb and forefinger, and, ever so lightly, she shaded the
fruit in the bowl.  There were two apples, a banana, a bundle of grapes and one very unremarkable orange in the collection.  Ms. Hurgess was talking, going on about lightness and hardness of touch making the difference.  Kaley looked away a moment to rummage through her book bag, and whispered to Spencer, “We’re not leaving this place without them.”

“Oh, ho-ho, yes we are,” Spencer argued.

“No, we’re not.  Not without them.”  She added, “You can’t make me.”

A flash of white-hot anger shot out from Spencer’s midsection and permeated her every cell.  Spencer’s face never flinched, never betrayed anything wrong.  Kaley stared up at that scraggily face, the beard growing slowly over that ruined cheek.  His mind was moving…things swimming beneath the surface
of that glacier-like mind.  “Have you taken a look around you?  Do you even know what’s goin’ on?”

Kaley started to say something, but stopped.  Something in her periphery caught her attention.  A long, flapping, skinless thing was hanging from the far wall
behind the children.  It wasn’t fading in and out of existence like the tentacles, it was
there
.  At least, it was to her.  And it was hanging directly over Spencer’s head, licking at him, tasting him.

Inside the art room, something had slid up around Ms. Hurgess’s legs and waist.  It was throbbing and black and slightly translucent.  Kaley could see into parts of it, saw pulsating muscles and other tissues.  She turned around, saw the same sort of tentacles slipping up around the other tables.  One of them had gone down Travis Turner’s shirt, another licking Laquanda’s right ear.

Ms. Hurgess was still talking about the intricacies of proper shading.  Kaley bent back over, rummaged through her book bag again, and whispered, “I don’t think they know that I can see them.”

“I don’t think they care,” Spencer said.  “It’s not like you can stop ’em.”

“I
can
stop them.  Shannon and me can—”

“I wouldn’t call your sister in to help on this one.”

“Why not?  She and I can—”

“Just trust me on this one.”

“I’m not leaving this place,” she said, returning to her original point.

Then,
Spencer pointed his gun at one of the girls, a tall one with braids in her hair, wearing a One Direction shirt.

Kaley shook her head.  “Do that, and
I’ll stay right here.  Just to spite you.”

“And the boy?  Peter?  He’s still waiting on us.  I’ll hurt him so badly—”

“No.”

“
No?!
” he exploded.  That white-hot rage could not be contained within him anymore.  He wasn’t used to being told no, and he wouldn’t accept it now.  “
No?!  You think I won’t?!  You think this is a fucking game, little girl?!
”

“No, I mean, he’s not still waiting on us,” she said calmly.  Kaley was now detecting many tremors in her monstrous web.  “Someone else has him. 
He’s…he’s taken Peter, and now he’s coming here.”

“What?  Who?”  Spencer went back to the door, pressed his back against the wall and peeked out.

“Kaley?  What are you saying?”  It was Ms. Hurgess again.

She sighed.  So difficult to keep track of everyone’s needs
in each reality.  “Nothing, Ms. Hurgess.  I was just, uh…singing to myself.  Just, uh, got this song in my head.”

Her teacher smiled, handing back the pencil.  “
Yeah?  Which song?”

“Uh…”  She had to think.  While she did, she detected another monster, one just as emotionally vapid as Spencer. 
He was coming towards the dock house, and he had a mind of meddle.  “That, uh, that old song ‘Tainted Love,’ or whatever it’s called.”

“Ooooo, good song.  I’m a child of the eighties
, you know.”

Kaley smiled.  “Yes ma’am,” she said, not knowing
what else to say.  She turned back and looked at her drawing. 
Ms. Hurgess’s way
is
better
, she thought.  Kaley was also staring at the five children; five more victims of the kind of monsters that might very well put the Prisoner and his Others to shame. 
I’ve got to get them out of here
.

Kaley started to move towards the children, to console them, if nothing else. 
But as soon as she did, she realized her mistake.

Just like in her dreams, moving when the Others were too close only alerted them.  They had their own kind of web.  They could feel things moving through the watery barrier, and they knew she was close.  Now, all at once, the water all around her exploded
, though no one else saw it.  Kaley tried to scream, but her voice caught in her throat.  From ceiling, floor and walls came…she didn’t even know what to call them.

One malformed limb at a time, they emerged.  Long, bony blac
k arms.  Or were they legs?  Whatever they were, they groped until they found purchase, and pulled themselves through.  They gripped the flimsiest things, things that ought not to have been able to remain still, such as the table and chairs. 
They just need a grip on something real, in this world, in order to come through
.