Psycho Within Us (The Psycho Series Book 2) (65 page)

Someone screamed.  Just before the door closed, he saw a woman wearing only her nightgown running at him.  She was missing her right arm.  As she approached, her left arm vanished.  Just
vanished
.  Then, her eyes vanished.  No blood, no mess, just gone, as if someone had hit
DELETE
or started erasing her.  Then she fell over—her left leg had disappeared.  No fuss, no muss, just disappeared.  She rolled over in that water, and Spencer saw her face vanish—it just turned blank, like a Mr. Potato Head without any parts put on, a flat piece of flesh.  She tried to scream through that sheet of flesh, but only managed to made
mmmmmmmmmm
noises.

When the doors closed, Spencer blinked a few times.  “Such a blank expression on her face.”  He smiled, snorted, laughed, and then guffawed so hard he couldn’t breathe.

Something slid past his leg, and he stopped laughing and fired a single round into the floor.  A black liquid spread across the water, and some of it floated into the air, living and coiling and searching for him.

Spencer pressed his back against one wall. 
He checked his clip, counted the bullets left, and started singing a classic by the Eagles.  “Last thing I remember, I was runnin’ for the door.  I had to find the passage back to the place I was before.”  Something was swimming on the floor, and something else was climbing out of the ceiling.  He aimed his pistol at it, but held his fire, waiting.  “‘Relax,’ said the night man.  ‘We are programmed to receive.  You can check out anytime you like, but you can
never
leave!’ ”

I have to go back for her
.

That thought was paramount in Leon’s mind as he watched the two men ahead of him try for one of the red doors
.  But then he turned away once something licked out of it and reached for them.  They darted down the hallway until they went through a door leading into a stairwell.  As the door shut on them, he heard them screaming.

Leon backed away from that door, and looked back where he came from.  Nothing made any sense.  He wasn’t in Cartersville Elementary School’s main building anymore,
of that much he was certain.  He didn’t know if he had managed to somehow go below into a bunker—
Some of these old schools have old bomb shelters they’ve turned into underground storage facilities
, he thought, knowing how ridiculous it sounded even in his head—or if he was unconscious and dreaming this.  Those were actually the only two theories he was entertaining at the moment.  How else could he describe all he’d seen?  And Spencer Pelletier…how else could it be that Spencer Pelletier was actually here?

Someone was laughing above him.  There was…something…on the ceiling.  It swam leisurely
with a motion akin to a backstroke.  But he would be damned if it was human, or even a remote cousin to
Homo sapiens
, or even a carbon-based life form.  Slowly, he backed away from it, then finally turned and jogged back down the hall.  Suddenly, he was in no hurry at all.  He understood he was suffering some form of shock, but he was okay with that, as long as it carried him back to Kaley…

Leon lost his way.  He didn’t know when it happened, just all at once he was moving down one of the school’s corridors…and then, just like that, he was back in the hotel-like hall.  The walls were
breathing, the ceiling hemorrhaging fluids…for a moment he thought he saw the hallway
curve
up ahead, but then it straightened.  He didn’t know where he was going.  Lost.  Utterly lost.

Then, inexplicably, he was back near the elevators. 
There Kaley was, where he had last seen her, lying near the elevator doors—
What the hell are elevators doing in a school?
  His mind still wanted to know, even as he raced over to her.  Leon knelt to examine, even as something long and slimy smacked him across the face, then licked down his back.  “Okay,” he said, trying to be sensible.  “Okay, so, she’s shot, Leon.  She’s shot and you’re going a little crazy.  Now what?”

The bullet had passed through her midsection.  That was never good. 
Okay
…
okay, so what do I do? 
Leon tore off his jacket and wrapped it around the girl’s belly to stop the bleeding, then looked around the macabre scene—the man that had been entangled by the tentacles, and whose friends had fled down the stairwell, was still there.  There was no life in his eyes, but his arms and legs were being toyed with by the tentacles that ravaged his body, as though he were some macabre puppet.

Leon
blinked, and forced himself to look away. 
Focus, Leon
.  He remembered to check the A, B, C, D, and E’s—Airway, Breathing, Circulation, Disability/Deformity, and Exposure—of the girl.  He put his ear next to her mouth, listened for breath.  He checked for a pulse.  Both were there, but incredibly faint.  There was no blood coming from her mouth or nose, so that was potentially good news.  He turned her head to the side to facilitate better breathing, for all the good it would do.  He rolled Kaley slightly on her side to check for an exit wound, and found it.

There was unholy tittering all around him.  Leon stood and hit the but
ton to summon the elevator.  The doors opened a few seconds later, and inside he saw a man lying on his back in the water, his eyes slightly opened, a bullet wound on the front of his head.  Slowly, he sank and vanished.  “Whatever,” he said, beyond caring or understanding at this point.  Paramount in his mind was Kaley Dupré’s safety.

Leon
knew that under ordinary circumstances it was never a good idea to move a gunshot victim, but these were no ordinary circumstances.  Ever so gently, he lifted Kaley off the ground, then stepped inside the elevator and used his foot to kick the button labele
d1
.  The buttons went as high as twenty.  How could that be?  CES didn’t have twenty floors. 
CES doesn’t have elevators, either
, he reminded himself.

As the doors shut, he heard whispers
, intense and angry.  “
He has her!  He has her!
”

He looked the small car over.  Water all around him, clinging impossibly to walls.  Tiny little things
swimming in it, some of them coming to the surface, nipping at air, then vanishing back below.  For the first time, he thought to ask out loud, “What—the—fuck—is—going—on?”

A tiny whisper.  “Detective…Hulsey…?”

He looked at the girl in his arms.  “Jesus Christ!” he breathed.  “Kaley!”

“Detective…”

“Don’t talk.  You shouldn’t talk.  Just hang in there, okay?  You’re gonna be all right, just stay with me.”

“I can’t…I can’t go with…
you…”

“I said don’t talk, and I mean
t it!”  Something shot out from the wall behind him, licking the back of his neck.  He spun to look.  Nothing there.

“They won’t…let me…they’re coming through now and…and…”  She swallowed.  “And now…they can finally…have me…”

“Nobody’s getting you, understand?  Nobody.  Not on my watch.”

“It’s okay…it’s okay…I think I’ll be all right…”  She swallowed a
gain, and blinked slowly, sleepily.  “I have to.  I have to go to them…or they’ll always…come after us…”

“
You’re not going anywhere that I don’t—”  Something shot out from the ceiling, snatched at him.  Leon dropped Kaley, reached for his gun in his waistline, and fired up at it.  The thing squealed and slapped against the wall; it was a like an arm, but with open eyes searching the room for him.  Leon stood over Kaley, protecting her, firing his gun until it was empty.  The arm leapt out of the ceiling and then dove into the wall behind him, disappearing into the waters there.

Leon looked down, and saw Kaley had almost sunken completely through. 
His heart leapt to his throat.  He saw a single arm, her dark-black skin standing out against the murky water.  He reached for her, but the hand sank beneath, and his hand only splashed around in nothing.  “
Kaley?  Kaley!  No!  Kaleyyyyy!  No!
”

Leon
felt something pushing against the back of his eyes.  It wriggled and danced and played with his nerve endings, sending searing hot pain through his face as the left eyeball popped out of its socket.  Something was crawling inside of him, and it was getting out.

The elevator was moving excruciatingly slow, probably as a result of other physical changes happening to the building.  But Spencer wasn’t worried.  He was smiling again.  When he felt her rooting around inside his head, it was like hearing a great truth affirmed. 
Nobody kills Kaley Dupré but me
.  But then he felt something else, a kind of surrender, and even a degree of what he would call fearlessness.

“Spencer,” she said, as if she were in the elevator with him.

“Where ya at, little girl?”

“I’m traveling.”

He didn’t ask what that meant; he figured he had a good idea.  “You packin’ heat?”

There was something in her voice he’d never heard before: humor.  “Have you ever known me to
carry a gun?”

Spencer’s head was spinning.  The loss of blood, and now exerting himself like this, it wasn’t a
winning combination.  “Wouldn’t do you much good anyway, where you’re goin’, I imagine.”  He snorted.  “But I figure ya know that by now.”

“I do.”  Calm.  Accepting.  Unflinching.  Completely unlike her.

“I guess ya know the truth now.  You’re sister, she’s not the Prisoner—I know because the Prisoner made a deal with me to kill her, an’ I don’t think she wants to die.  She may want
you
dead, but that’s her subconscious, and no creature wants to die.  Not even the suicidal ones, not even subconsciously.”

“And you’re never wrong about people.”

He smiled.  “Now you’re learnin’.  And she didn’t create the Others, either.  She summoned them, kind of…
bargained
with them, I dunno.  She found them, and they found her.  Like two people on Craigslist, or fuckin’ eHarmony.  Think of the Prisoner as somebody in jail crusin’ one o’ those websites, lookin’ to make friends on the outside, finding vulnerable, impressionable young women, and using them for favors.  He needed you an’ me an’ your sister to be near one another because he knew it could open a door, but he knew that after they got what they wanted, she would be a liability.  And Shannon wanted to die.  Their needs…just…I dunno,
matched
somehow.  The criteria fit in some fucked up way, their needs aligned, and the interdimensional algorithm of dating sites hooked them up.”

“You make weird analogies.”

“You make weird things happen.”

He sensed something in her, perhaps more humor?  Was she smiling?  Then, all at once, he felt her go cold. 
“Spencer…what are they?  What do they want?”

“I don’t know, but give m
e some time for cryin’ out loud, I’ve only been working on this little mystery for eight hours.  One thing at a time.  I still have to get outta this place, and the mess you and your sister left behind.”  Spencer snorted out a laugh.  “You and your sister…must be some fucking nexus.  Somethin’ like…I dunno, one in a trillion zillion in the cosmos.  Some
Star Trek
shit, is what you are.  You might’ve been all right, had ya been left alone.”  Spencer added, “Had ya not met me.”

“You have a knack for warping minds, and expanding thought.
  I guess that’s bad for people like Shannon and me to be around.”

“That’s me, warping the fragile little minds of today’s youth.”  Something splashed just
beside him, but he ignored it and kept his eyes and gun trained on the elevator doors.  “Listen, I know you don’t like listenin’ to my advice, but ya really need to hear this.  Where you’re going…it probably ain’t like anything you’ve ever seen before.  It won’t be just another world or another dimension, it’ll be another everything.  There might not be up and down like there is here, or left and right.  There might not even be sound, or light, or
physical things
at all.  The kind of shit Harlan Ellison never dreamt of when he was trippin’ balls.”

“Who’s Harlan Ellison?”

“Science fiction writer.  I read him some in prison.”  He watched the lights on the button panel light up.  The elevatorwas a
t9
.  No
w8
.  No
w7
.  “Speakin’ o’ which, I expect the Prisoner is still swimmin’ around in there somewhere?”

“I think so.  I didn’t feel him go through.”

“Then listen to me carefully.  You listening?”

“I’m listening.”

Now button
6
lit up.  Spencer said two words: “Let go.”

Silence as the elevator slid slowly past level five, then past level four.  Finally, Kaley
asked, “Let go?”

“Ever
ything holding you back.  Just let it go.”  Something swam overhead.  He ignored it.  “Every anchor you ever felt keeping you locked in one place, unable to move or breathe.  Every strand of empathy you hold for living things.  Every moment of sympathy.  Every time you ever held back so you could set a good example for your little sister.  Every squeamish moment you had while watching an R-rated movie.  Every time you wanted to slap your mother and wake her up outta her meth-addled dream, but didn’t.  Every time someone insulted you or your sister and you took the high road,” he said.  “Just let go.”