The Summoning (8 page)

Where?

Ryan felt like he might know where the man wanted to take him, he seemed to know in the dream, but now that he was awake it was like his mind was blocking it.

But he needed to remember. That was why he had written down this address. That’s why he came to this town. He needed to remember something that had happened here. And it had something to do with the red-haired man and the place he wanted him to see in the dream. It had something to do with him floating in the water with his eyes gone. It had something to do with the brown suitcase underneath his bed that someone had sent to him.

Did it have something to do with Carol? Tom and Victor? Amber?

Ryan closed his eyes and shook his head no. He had a sudden overwhelming urge to just grab his money from underneath the mattress, stuff it all back into the duffel bag, and run out to his car and leave. Just drive. East maybe. All the way across the United States. Just head east until he ran into the ocean.

But he couldn’t leave. He needed to be here. And there was someone following him, he was sure of that. Someone from Oakland, from his old life. And they would follow him wherever he went – even all the way east. They would never stop looking for him.

Ryan looked at the small digital alarm clock that Carol had let him use. It was almost five o’clock in the morning. He didn’t need to set the alarm because he wasn’t going back to sleep. He lay back down and stared up at the ceiling, he watched the flickering lights and shadows that the TV made on the ceiling.

At six o’clock in the morning Ryan went down to the kitchen. He halted for a split second when he saw Tom and Victor sitting at the small table. They were both hunched over plates of breakfast that Carol had made for them. He didn’t know why they were up so early; he didn’t think that either one of them worked, but he wasn’t sure. They never told him anything about themselves.

“Good morning,” Ryan said and he smiled at them.

Victor and Tom both stood up without a word to Ryan. They took their plates to Carol. “I’m done, Carol,” Victor said. “That was a wonderful breakfast.”

Carol glanced down at their plates. “You didn’t even finish all of your food, Victor.”

Victor shot a glance at Ryan, and then he looked at Carol and gave her a smug smile. “Suddenly, I’ve lost my appetite.”

Tom nodded in agreement. “I need to get going. There’s some stuff I need to get done.”

Carol eyed Tom. “You don’t do anything except sleep all day. What could be so important now?”

Tom stared at Carol, his mouth moved as he tried to think of an answer. He glanced at Victor for help.

Carol shooed the two older men away and gave them a disgusted scowl. “Go on, then. Get out of here.”

Ryan moved out of the doorway to give the men room to scuttle out through the doorway. He entered the kitchen and stared at Carol. “If I’m disrupting things around here, I can find somewhere else to stay.”

Carol scraped the plates of half-eaten food into the small kitchen waste can. “Nonsense,” she snapped at him. She gestured at the small table. “Go on. Sit down.”

Ryan sat down in the chair, his body rigid and tense. “I can tell they don’t want me here.”

Carol looked at Ryan. “This isn’t their house, is it? It’s my house. They don’t make the rules, I do.”

She poured Ryan a glass of orange juice and brought it to him.

Ryan took a sip, but it didn’t taste the same. Everything seemed better yesterday, fresh and new and exciting, but today the dark dread was washing over him, clouding everything, ruining everything.

“You okay, Ryan?”

Ryan nodded and gave Carol a half-smile. “I just haven’t been sleeping too well lately.”

“Something wrong with the bed?”

“No,” Ryan answered quickly. “It’s just me.” He smiled at her and then added: “I’ll be fine.”

There seemed to be something in Carol’s expression that Ryan was trying to pinpoint. She seemed concerned about him, overly concerned for a total stranger. But there were other emotions mixed in – sadness and fear underneath her expression. And there was something strange about Carol; she seemed to know things about him, but she didn’t seem to want to reveal too much, and for that reason Ryan felt it was best not to reveal anything to her either.

Did she know something? Ryan asked himself. How much did she know? Was she going to help him or hurt him? Could he trust her?

Carol must be a part of this, he thought. He was sure of that; he just didn’t know what role she played right now. And since she wasn’t going to volunteer anything, he would have to find out more before he could trust her.

He sipped his orange juice as he watched her prepare a plate of breakfast for him and another bag lunch with two sandwiches inside.

Ryan needed to get away from Carol’s house, and driving to the construction site made him feel a little better. He looked forward to the hours of mundane work ahead of him; tasks that he could totally concentrate on instead of letting his mind wander and torture himself with questions about his past – questions that he couldn’t answer right now (or didn’t want to answer, his mind whispered). It was blissful to just work and forget about everything for a while.

After Ryan parked his silver Chevy Impala, he walked across the dirt parking area to the buildings. He met up with the always-cheerful John who gave him a list of jobs to do. John wasn’t overly friendly, but he wasn’t mean either, like he had gotten used to the idea of tolerating Ryan for the moment.

Hours later, Ryan felt a little better. He had swept up some empty rooms in one building, getting them ready for the painters. And now he pushed an empty wheelbarrow to another building which he was going to clean up and get it ready for the drywall hangers. He pushed the wheelbarrow past another laborer that he’d seen yesterday. Ryan nodded at the guy, he was pretty sure his name was Miguel.

“Morning,” Ryan said as he pushed his wheelbarrow past the man.

Miguel nodded as they walked past each other.

“Drip, drip,” Ryan heard Miguel say after he was a few steps past him.

Ryan stopped in his tracks. He dropped his wheelbarrow down to the concrete floor with a crash and turned back to Miguel who was still walking away. “What did you say?” he called after him.

Miguel turned around and stared at him. “What?” he asked.

Ryan ran up to Miguel and stood in front of him. “You just said something when you walked past me. What did you say?”

Miguel stood his ground, but there was an uncertainty in his eyes, a growing fear. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, man.”

“You got something to say to me?” Ryan asked. “If you know something, then spit it out.”

Miguel shook his head. “You’re loco, man.” He turned around and walked away quickly.

Ryan watched Miguel walk away, and then he went back to his wheelbarrow.

Ryan picked up scrap pieces of metal, wood, wire, and pipe in a room in the next building. The walls were filled with pink fiberglass insulation and there were stacks of drywall leaning against the metal stud walls.

Something on the floor a few feet away caught Ryan’s eye as he was about to pick up some scrap pieces of metal. He walked a few steps over to the spot on the floor and stared down at it. It was a small dark spot. It was still wet. It looked like blood.

There was another drop near this drop. And then another drop beyond that one – a trail of blood drops. He looked up to see where they were leading to and he saw the red-haired man. He had been in the doorway that led out to the hall, but he was already gone, just a blur of movement of his dark suit, red hair, and pale skin.

“Hey!” Ryan shouted. He could feel an anger boiling up inside of him. Why wouldn’t this man leave him alone? What did he want?

Ryan ran out into the wide hallway of metal studs and insulation. Work lights were strung along the ceiling.

The red-haired man wasn’t out there. Ryan looked down at the concrete floor and he saw the trail of blood drops.

Blood from the red-haired man’s fingers.

Drip. Drip.

Ryan ran down the hall, following the trail of blood. He turned a corner and saw just the flash of dark movement at the end of the hall. The red-haired man had just entered a doorway into a dark room. Ryan raced down the hall to the doorway of the dark room. When he reached the doorway, he hesitated. He looked down at the floor in front of the room and he saw more drops of blood, bigger drops.

Ryan stepped inside the room.

The room was dark – it already had drywall up on the walls. Almost immediately Ryan’s eyes adjusted to the murkiness. The room was large; it was going to be some kind of utility room and the doorway was the only way in or out. The room was empty except for the red-haired man at the other end; he stood facing the wall, his back to Ryan. His ruined hands were clasped behind his back, his blood dripping down onto the floor, forming dark puddles on the concrete. Ryan could hear the dripping sounds.

Ryan took a step towards the man. “This can’t be real,” he whispered.

The red-haired man made no movement – he just stared at the wall in front of him, his back still to Ryan.

Ryan took another step closer to the man.

This man couldn’t be real. This was just a dream, just some kind of nightmare that he was having while he was still awake. Some kind of hallucination. “You’re not real,” he whispered.

He stood right behind the red-haired man. He reached his hand out towards the man’s back, about to touch his shoulder with his trembling fingers, but then he drew his hand back to himself. The man still hadn’t moved a muscle.

Ryan glanced behind him.

No one behind him. No one in the hallway outside the room.

Ryan turned back around and the red-haired man had turned around. They were face-to-face now, only inches away from each other. Ryan could see the eaten-away flesh around the red-haired man’s mouth in more detail now. He could see the long gashes running from each side of the man’s mouth up to his ears with horrifying clarity. He saw the other smaller scars that lined the man’s pale face; the scars took up almost every square inch of the man’s flesh. The red-haired man’s eyes were so light blue that they were almost translucent.

“Nice to see you again, Cutter,” the red-haired man whispered, and Ryan could feel the man’s ice-cold breath on his face; he could smell a musty odor from the man that was not unlike the duffel bag of money and the brown suitcase, a wet and earthy smell.

Ryan shook his head no and backed up a step, nearly tripping and falling down. He couldn’t fall down – he couldn’t be helpless on the floor in front of this monster. He needed to run.

“No,” Ryan grunted out. “This is all wrong. This can’t be real.”

The red-haired man took a step closer to Ryan and his polished dress shoes echoed on the concrete floor in the dark room. “This is no dream. This is real. More real than you can imagine.”

Ryan took a few steps backwards, ready to bolt out of the dark room, back out to the hallway, away from this thing.

The red-haired man didn’t walk towards Ryan anymore; instead, he raised his ruined hands towards his own face, his smile never wavering. The red-haired man grabbed his own mouth, one hand on top, the other on his lower jaw, his fingers gouged inside of his mouth, finding a grip. And then he pulled on his mouth, pulling his lower jaw down impossibly wide, ripping open the scars on each side of his face, the skin slowly splitting apart with a sick, wet sound. The scars split all the way up to the man’s ears and the lower half of his face hung open, the bottom jaw hanging down loosely, bottom teeth exposed and a tongue (which seemed way too long) wiggling and squirming around inside like a pink snake.

Ryan stared in disbelief, his grip on sanity suddenly beginning to slip. A short grunt of a scream escaped his throat without his noticing.

He had to get out of here he had to get out of here he had to get out of here.

Ryan bolted out of the room and sprinted down the hall. He glanced back at the doorway to the dark room, sure that the red-haired man would be running after him with his loose lower jaw swinging back and forth as he ran. But he wasn’t there, he wasn’t coming after him.

Ryan turned back around and ran right into …

… John, who did not look happy.

“What the hell are you doing, Ryan?”

Ryan stared into John’s eyes and he tried to speak, his mouth was moving and he was trying to form the words as his mind spun with horror. He looked down at the concrete floor about to point down at the trail of blood that he’d followed earlier, but the spots of blood were gone. He turned and looked back at the doorway to the dark room, but the blood spots weren’t there anymore, either.

He turned back around to face John. “They were there,” he finally managed to whisper. “He … he was there. In there.”

“You on something, Ryan?”

“No. I saw … saw …”

“You need to get back to work.”

“I don’t … I don’t …”

But Ryan couldn’t finish his sentence. He bolted past John and threw open a door that led to the outside. He barely made it a few steps outside before he bent over beside the exterior block wall and threw up the breakfast that Carol had prepared for him.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” John said from the doorway.

Ryan shook his head no as he wiped away spittle and puke from his mouth with the back of his trembling hand. “I don’t feel very good. I need to go home.”

John rushed up to Ryan, but he didn’t get too close, there was something about the smell of that vomit, something he recognized, but he couldn’t put a name to the smell. “Yeah, I think you should go home. There’s something fucked up about you and I don’t want you here anymore.”

Ryan nodded at John. “Maybe you’re right.”

Ryan pulled up into Carol’s driveway, his tires crunching on the gravel. He got out and hurried to her house.

No one was downstairs right now; Carol wasn’t in the kitchen – a small blessing for Ryan. He hurried across the living room towards the stairs, but then he stopped in his tracks. Carol’s big orange cat sat in front of the stairs. The cat was up on its feet, crouched down and ready to either attack or bolt. Ryan heard a low growl from the cat’s throat. But then after a hiss, the cat raced away down the hall.