Your Number (5 page)

8.

The last thing Kate wanted to do was go inside that apartment, but she had too many cherished mementos, and couldn’t leave without them. She’d go home to Spokane, to her mother, and her old cat Pumpkin. She’d change her name immediately, and get a job in real estate, or find work as an interior designer. She always wanted to become an interior designer. Hollywood had nothing left for her, and she had nothing left for Hollywood.

The front door opened silently. As soon as she stepped inside, she heard rustling noises from deep in the apartment. She felt for her cell phone, wanting to call the police, finding only an empty slot in her handbag.

“Dammit!” she whispered stridently, remembering she’d tossed the phone. More rustling, then a solid
Crash!
She backed out the door. Then a gust of either bravery or stupidity came over her, and she slipped back in, and crept to the kitchen, where she grabbed the biggest knife she had. Then she tiptoed toward the source of the sound—her bedroom.

The door was ajar slightly, and she tried to peek inside, but saw only her dresser, every drawer open, and her clothes strewn onto the floor. The pictures had been toppled over, pictures of her and Charlie. Suddenly she was pissed, fuming at whoever the hell had the nerve to break in and go through her things.

Then a noise behind her, clicking on the wood floor, made her twist around. She saw one of the nasty creatures, its dark gray plumage sickly and sparse, its curved beak snapping and frothing. She dropped the blade, screaming, and bolted inside her bedroom, no longer concerned with who was in there. She slammed the door and locked it. Then she felt another presence and spun to find a young girl. Chocolate skin with scars blanketing her arms, half of her face, and her left leg below a bright yellow dress.

“Sunshine?” Kate puffed for breath. “What do you want?”

“I want to help you,” she bent over a pile of pictures and other personal effects, searching. “But we have to be quick.”

“What’re you looking for?” Kate heard a sudden and forceful thump against the door.

“There’s no time,” Sunshine kept searching, throwing aside a picture of Charlie and Kate. “Help me find something with your sister’s imprint.”

“Eva? What for?” more banging forced Kate to flinch.

“Just hurry!” the girl commanded. “Anything that has a connection to Eva. A picture, a gift she gave you—anything!”

“What?” she trembled. “Why?”

“HURRY!”

Kate got on her knees and sifted through the pile. She found an old scrapbook of Eva’s—drawings, poems, random thoughts.

“Here!” she gave it to Sunshine.

“This is perfect!” the girl thumbed through the pages and her eyes got bigger and bigger. “Just perfect!” she placed it on the bed and opened the satchel she had draped over her shoulder. From inside, she produced the same talisman Kate had seen her use before, at their first meeting.

The door quaked at its hinges, and the ceiling cracked, shaking the light fixtures, forcing Kate to slink next to the bed and cover her head with her wrists. Sunshine crisscrossed the wood and bone and sinew talisman over the scrapbook again and again, unaffected by the steady pounding outside, the dreadful beasts fighting to get in.

The girl closed her eyes halfway, until Kate saw only white slivers, and began to murmur. The incantation, combined with the constant beating and snarling and slashing, drove Kate out of her mind with fear. Sunshine chanted and chanted, dangling her ancient charm over the homemade book. Then she shook it at the door and screamed at the top of her lungs: “Be gone, impure spirits!”

A still silence overtook the room. Kate’s ears rang. Sunshine smiled, exhaled, and dropped her shoulders. Kate climbed to her feet and went to the door. She put her ear to the wood and heard more silence.

“That’s it?” she turned the lock and opened the door. “They’re gone?”

“NO!” Sunshine pushed Kate out of the way. Kate fell flat on her back and saw the whole thing right before her eyes—the whole, horrible thing. An enormous head came through the doorframe, and its smoky eyes focused on the little girl. Then several long legs slithered in, giving it a foothold inside the bedroom.

Sunshine raised both hands, brandishing her ancient talisman, shouting obscure phrases. Kate had no clue what she said, or what kind of power was in that charm. All she knew was it worked. The lanky, spiderlike being dropped its jaw wide and let loose an awful howl. Kate could see fear in its eyes. She also saw something else, something Sunshine didn’t see. Little beasties, horn-billed and scraggly, dozens of them, from all angles, coming out of nowhere.

“Sunshine!” Kate yelled too late. One jumped the little girl, landing on her shoulders. Another sprang and clung to her back, then another and another, until they’d covered her head to toe, bringing her to the floor. “Sunshine! NO!” Kate took two steps, then stopped cold when she realized she’d been trapped.

The gigantic demon stared with malevolent resolve, bristly black hairs protruding from its scaled skin, lesions oozing all over its body, lips frothing with bubbly bile.

“Your number is up, my dear,” it looked her up and down. “It seems I have another just like you,” Kate knew it was talking about her sister. “Yes, your sister,” it nodded. “Eva, is it not? She’s waiting for you. They’re all waiting for you!”

“N-n-no!” Kate backed up, withdrawing to the balcony. “You won’t get me! I won’t let you get me!”

The gangly beast slithered fast. Deceptively fast. “You don’t understand. There’s no beating me. Your number is up, and that’s that.”

Kate couldn’t bear the sight of the thing, its elongated mandible, its clasping and clacking pinchers. Its long body whipped and undulated as it sped toward her, then it reared up, reaching for her with half of its appendages. She screamed, louder and longer than she’d ever screamed. For her sister, for Charlie, for her own life. Back, back, back she stepped, quicker and quicker. Behind the evil beast, she heard Sunshine, shouting her name.

“Kate! Stop!”

Kate had no choice. She leaned against the rail, her long, chestnut hair hanging over the edge. Clacking and clicking, the pinchers got closer. The vile creature closed in and snatched her neck. She kicked and kicked, scraping her fingernails into its cold, dead skin. It was hard, like a shell. What was this thing? With her thumb, she jabbed at an eye, the biggest of them all, dead center in the black pupil. It winced and she shook loose. Gravity took her. She felt weightless, and thought she saw her life flash before her eyes, but it was actually building, all ten floors, speeding like a bullet. She thought she’d pass out before hitting the ground, but she remained awake the whole way down.

CRASH!

She sank into the windshield of a parked sedan, broken and beaten, blood splashing from her nose. A woman cried out and a car slammed its brakes, screeching and sliding. She saw shadows, people running. Numb from head to toe, she watched a dark fog emerge in front of her, an impossibly frigid wind blowing from it.

“Kate!” she heard a familiar voice. “Kate, hold on for just a little longer!” Sunshine pushed through the gawkers. Carrying Eva’s old photo album, she swung her tattered charm over Kate’s head. The dark haze got thicker, and Kate could see the girl no longer. She heard the chanting, rhythmic and strong. It took the place of her dying heartbeat, sustaining her, keeping her alive…somehow. But she wasn’t alive. Kate knew that now. She saw herself, from above. She saw the car she’d landed on, the panicked people gathered round. She also saw Sunshine, the brave and mysterious girl, and her powerful amulet.

Then it felt like she was inside a tornado. A strong, warm breeze took her, and she slid past the murky haze, into the webbed structure of Sunshine’s talisman.

She heard Sunshine again, singing, calling, imploring some greater power. Kate felt it, the supernatural energy, making her whole again. Tingles traveled from head to toe, and she breathed deep. Light blinded her. She felt cold and stiff. Something compelled her to sit up, so she did. A thin bed sheet fell from her naked body, and she reached for her face, her neck, her lips, her ears, checking for injuries. Nothing. Then she looked at her wrists and held her breath, trying to fathom what she was seeing. Cuts, deep and long, sutured together with coarse, black thread.

She tried to speak, but her throat was sandpaper. The metal felt like ice against her legs, and the silver walls reflected her image back to her. A familiar image. She stumbled to the wall, and stared closer at the metallic, shiny surface, distorted, but recognizable features staring back at her. Eva. It was Eva. But how? Then she remembered Sunshine.

An abrupt
Clang!
made her spin with a start. A metal tray full of small cutting instruments was strewn across the tiled floor, and a nurse’s assistant, in her twenties, stared wide-eyed at Kate, trembling.

“You…you’re alive! Eva, you’re alive!”

Kate checked the stitches on her wrists a second time. “But, I’m…I’m not Eva. I’m Kate.”

“You poor thing,” the assistant retrieved the sheet and wrapped Kate in it. “You’re not thinking straight.”

Kate managed a half-hearted laugh. “She did it,” she felt herself growing stronger. “She broke the cycle! She beat the death number!”

The nurse said something, but Kate’s focus fell to the floor, to the scattered medical instruments. In the chaotic mess, she noticed a pattern, four scalpels, one pair on top of another, parallel to each other, two lines intersecting two other lines at oblique angles, forming a perfect:

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