It made no sense, but I could see it in his face - he was happy. His face was brighter now, his eyes wider, his mouth turned up in an open smile. His entire body was loose and relaxed. It was as if a switch had been flipped. One moment he was sombre, with the weight of a world I could barely imagine resting fully on his shoulders, and the next moment he was bright and cheerful.
‘Are you . . . happy?’ I asked.
‘Happy as hell, John,’ he said, breaking into a wide grin. ‘I hate it when this happens.’
‘You hate being happy?’
‘Happy, sad, whatever,’ he said. He stood up and walked past me to the door. ‘It’s not the feeling, it’s the imposition. I don’t have time for this right now.’ He opened the door and called out. ‘Stephanie?’
‘Yes, Mr Forman?’
‘Is anyone back yet?’
‘Just the three of us,’ she said. ‘Listen, I’ve got some great news—’
‘I thought you might,’ he said, cutting her off. ‘Why don’t you come on in and share it with us?’
‘Okay!’ she shouted, and I heard her chair shift, followed by the clatter of heels across the floor. She stepped into the room, smiling from ear to ear, words pouring out in a jubilant flood. ‘I just talked to my boyfriend on the phone, and he—’
Agent Forman swung his gun like a club, slamming her square in the face with a sickening crunch that must have shattered her nose. She staggered back, against the open door, her cry cut off by a gurgle of blood in her throat, and Forman hit her again, this time in the side of the head. Her eyes were wide, too surprised to be scared.
‘Do you like that?’ he demanded, watching her reel to the side, trying to keep her balance. ‘Some people are trying to work in here,’ he hit her again, ‘and we can’t do it,’ another blow, ‘with cheerful little Stephanie out there so damn happy all the time.’ He hit her again, on the back of the head, knocking her to the floor. I stared at her in shock, then looked up at him.
‘That’s a very brave defence you put up,’ he said to me, walking back to his desk. ‘Stephanie is eternally grateful for the way you stopped me from beating her unconscious.’
‘Who are you?’ I asked.
‘That’s right,’ he said, picking up his coffee-cup. ‘Puzzle it out. Stay sharp.’ He carried the cup to Stephanie’s body, rolled her over with his foot, and probed the carpet for blood. Her nose was bleeding, and there was blood in her hair from what was probably a cut from the gun barrel. She was breathing, but unconscious. Forman wiped a spot of blood from the carpet with his shirtsleeve, then poured the coffee out all over the spot on the floor.
‘That’s lesson number one,’ he said. ‘In a small-town dump like this you’re not going to have a CSI team going through the place with a fine-toothed comb. They see spilled coffee, they’ll think spilled coffee, and I’ll be back to clean it up tomorrow. Now pick her up.’
‘Why?’
‘Because we’re going home,’ said Forman. ‘Consider it a trade: I’ll introduce you to my toys, and you tell me how you killed a god.’
Chapter 15
‘I found him,’ said Forman, holding his cellphone to his ear while he drove. I was in the front passenger seat; Stephanie, still unconscious, was lying in the back. ‘No, not him,’ Forman said, ‘the person who killed him. I know, I know - you were right. Well, that’s the part you’re not going to believe: he’s just a kid. Human. No, I have no idea, but I’m going to find out. I’ll call you.’
Forman clicked off his phone and dropped it in his shirt pocket. His gun was in the pocket of his suit coat, on the far side away from me. We were almost at the edge of town, and I didn’t know where we were going after that. I was terrified, but more than that I was confused.
Did he say Crowley was a god?
I could have run, back when we first reached the car, but I had to know what he knew. Forman had all the answers I’d been looking for, and I’d do whatever it took to get them.
‘Who was that?’ I asked.
‘Nobody,’ said Forman, and laughed. ‘Now, where to start? I really have no idea. I suppose the first question is, how’d you do it?’
‘How did I do what?’
‘Don’t play stupid,’ he snapped. ‘You killed him. Whoever he was. Who was he?’
‘Who was who?’ I didn’t want to play dumb, but I didn’t know what else to say. He was accusing me of killing Mr Crowley, that much seemed clear, and he seemed to know that Crowley was some kind of supernatural being. After that, I started to get lost. And who was he talking to on the phone?
‘Mkhai,’ he said, pounding emphatically on the steering wheel. ‘The god you killed - the Clayton Killer. You know about him and you’re not dead - that means he’s dead, and that means you’re probably the one who killed him.’
‘It was attacking me,’ I said. ‘It was trying to kill me. I didn’t—’
‘Whose body did he take?’ Forman interrupted. ‘You probably thought he was someone from your community - maybe even someone you knew. He might have even been in Bill Crowley’s body by the time you saw him.’
Aha. Forman knew less of the story than I thought. He thought the demon had jumped into Crowley at the end, after killing Neblin, which meant his story was incomplete. I held onto his lack of knowledge like a lifeline: if I knew something he didn’t, that gave me power - not much, but it was something. There was no sense telling him any more than I had to.
‘It was a demon,’ I said. ‘It had big claws, and really sharp teeth - a lot of them, more than even make sense - and huge eyes, like plates, that glowed in the dark.’ I didn’t say anything about Mr Crowley.
We passed under a streetlight, and I saw Forman smile before the light fell behind us and the car plunged into darkness again. We were outside of Clayton now, on the one-lane road into the forest, and as my eyes adjusted to the dark I saw his face lit by eerie red lights from the dashboard, his expression dark and feral.
‘Mkhai,’ he murmured.
‘You said he was a god?’
‘Compared to you, without question,’ Forman sneered. ‘When your ancestors crawled out of the muck and howled at the shadows it was he who answered them, great and terrible.’
I watched him silently, seeing in the dim red light Forman’s eyes light up with a terrifying zeal.
‘We were all gods then,’ he continued, ‘or at least that’s what people called us. Mkhai was the God of Death to some, of Vengeance to others; even the God of Faces to a kingdom on the banks of the Nile. But time moves on, and glory fades. That’s what killed us in the end: time.’
He said ‘us’. I’d assumed he was some kind of hunter, or maybe a worshipper, but was he another demon, like Crowley?
‘You’re scared again,’ he said, glancing at me quickly. ‘So is Stephanie, but not of me. Not directly. A reflection of me, perhaps, somewhere in the back of her mind. The nightmare me that she sees while she sleeps. I assure you,’ he added, looking at me again, ‘the reality is far worse.’
He turned back to face the road, gripped the wheel tighter, and all of a sudden we were accelerating insanely as the engine screamed in protest. Glowing in the headlights, the trees on the side of the road blurred to a wall of white, and I clung on to the armrest.
Forman whooped with exhilaration.
‘I never get to do this!’ he shouted. We took a turn too fast, the car skidding to the side and almost careening off the road. ‘Most of the people who ride in my car think I’m an agent with the government, so I can’t very well drive like this with them. And, of course, all the other people who ride in my car are unconscious, like her.’ He laughed and took another turn, pulling hard to the left this time, and I could feel the wheels catch and whine as they lost and regained their grip on the asphalt. There was no way we could survive this - or at least, no way that I could. Forman, if he really was another demon, might simply regenerate and walk away like it was nothing.
He shouted again, half a laugh and half a scream.
‘I love it! I love it!’
‘You’re going to get us killed!’ I yelled, holding on for dear life with both hands.
‘Yes, I am!’ he cried, almost a squeal. He seemed as scared as I was now, but he didn’t slow down. The road was a narrow strip of white, each curve and rise coming into the headlights just seconds before we rocketed past it and into the blurred unknown.
‘We’re almost home now,’ he said, gritting his teeth as we hurtled through the trees. ‘Almost home. My toys will hear us coming, and they will rattle in their chains. Here they are.’
He turned another corner, the car flying wildly to the side as he slammed on the brakes, and an old house came into view, tucked into a clearing in the trees. The car slid through dirt and gravel, nearly tipping over, and crashed into a pair of garbage cans with an angry metal crunch. Stephanie’s body flew off the seat and hit the back of ours before thudding to the floor; the airbags in the front exploded with the sound of a gunshot, catching me on the side of my head with the force of a solid punch. We hit one of the garbage cans again, crushing it against the side of the house, and just as suddenly everything was still.
Forman was cackling like a maniac, loud guffaws that degenerated quickly into sobs of terror. I could barely think; my brain was scrambled from the crash, making it hard to know where I was or what was happening, but even the things I saw clearly were nightmarish and impossible. Why was he laughing? Why was he crying? Why didn’t anything he said make sense? My breathing was fast and shallow, and I was desperate to leave. I fumbled with the door and finally opened it, taking in deep gulps of air while I wrestled with my seatbelt. Forman’s body twitched and doubled over, wracked with sobs. Finally I found the button and opened the latch, falling out of the car before the belt could even retract. It clung to me like a spider’s web, and I shook it off madly.
I was free. The car was parallel to the house, shining its headlights out across the road and into the trees on the far side. I didn’t know how far we’d driven, how far we were from Clayton or any other living thing, but I knew which direction we’d come from. The air was cold and sharp, pricking my sweaty skin like needles of ice. I steeled myself and ran through the gravel driveway, just a few stumbling steps before the ground in front of my feet leaped up in a black tuft, and I heard the loud crack of a gun behind me. I kept running, and it happened again - an explosion of dirt, a bright spark on the asphalt of the road, and the sound of a shot behind me.
‘Stop running!’
I was at the near edge of the road, far from cover with nowhere to run. At this distance he probably couldn’t hit me with any great accuracy, but he’d have time for four or five good shots before I reached the trees, which put the odds in his favour. I stopped and raised my hands.
‘Don’t raise your hands, this isn’t a stick-up.’
I lowered my arms and turned around slowly. Forman was standing by the open passenger door, aiming his gun at me.
‘Get back here and help me carry her inside,’ he said.
He was back in control again, somehow. What was going on? My curiosity overpowered my fear, and I walked towards him back. I had to find out what he was, and what it all meant. When I reached the car I opened the rear door and leaned in to look at Stephanie, putting a hand near her face, like we did with the corpses; her puffs of breath were faint but warm. She was still alive.
‘Just grab her feet and haul her out,’ Forman said curtly. Reaching in and hoisting her under the arms into a sitting position, I stepped back and lifted her out of the car. Forman turned off the engine and headlights and led me around to the front door; there was no porch, just a narrow wooden step. He opened the door and I followed him in, laying Stephanie’s body gently on an old, threadbare couch.
Forman lit a lamp and sat in a sunken chair, calm and satisfied. ‘What do you want to do with her?’ he asked.
‘You’re the one that brought her here,’ I said. Her nose was probably broken, and her mouth and neck were covered with a brown smear of drying blood.
‘Don’t be an idiot,’ said Forman. ‘You’ve got a pretty girl in the middle of nowhere - show a little imagination. Consider it my gift to you.’
The house was sparsely decorated, if at all; it looked like he’d bought the place on sale, half-furnished, and never bothered to add anything else.
‘How long have you lived here?’ I asked.
‘Three months,’ he said. ‘But don’t change the subject.’
‘I’m not going to hurt her,’ I said.
‘Sure you will,’ Forman shrugged. ‘You want to hurt everybody else - why should she be different?’
‘I’m not going to hurt her because you want me to.’
‘But you did hurt my friend,’ he said. ‘You killed him - a being practically made of power, and you killed him. How did you do it?’
I looked back, still wary of revealing what had happened. You never know what kind of knowledge will be useful, and when.
‘You’re another one, aren’t you?’ I asked.
Forman smiled thinly. ‘Another god?’
‘I called him a demon,’ I said. ‘I guess I have a dimmer view of him than you do.’
‘We’ve been called demons before,’ said Forman. ‘Shades, wraiths, werewolves, bogeymen. Even serial killers, though only by reputation. People like us can be anything we want to be - just like her.’ He pointed at Stephanie, lying inert on the couch.
‘Is she one of you too?’
‘Of course not,’ he said, standing up and walking towards her. ‘On her own she has no power at all, no more than any of you, but with our help, she can be anything you want her to be. You want a slave? You want a lover? You want a beast of prey to hunt out back? She can be it.’
He leaned in and pulled up a strand of her hair, casually, as if he were shopping. ‘Never underestimate the power of torture,’ he told me. ‘It’s a truly amazing tool. Not for getting the truth, of course - when you want information you have to use other means, which is why I’m not currently torturing you. But what you get with torture that you can’t get anywhere else is complete and utter malleability. So come on, what do you want her to be?’
He was a demon, though so far I hadn’t seen any demonic transformation. I might as well ask.
‘Do you steal bodies too?’
‘I stole two tonight,’ he said. ‘Counting you.’
‘No, I mean like the one I killed. You said he could take bodies, and look like someone I knew. Can you do that too?’
He shrugged. ‘It would be a very boring world if every god were the same. Sure, you could pray to all of us when you wanted to steal a body, but then who would you turn to when you wanted something else?’
‘I don’t believe there’s ever actually been a patron God of Body-snatching,’ I said.
‘You’re ignoring my questions, so I’m being indirect with yours.’
‘I won’t tell you anything unless I get something in return.’
‘But I’m giving you exactly what you’ve always wanted!’ he said. ‘Your very own victim, unconscious and ready to play whatever games you want. She’s no Barbie, I’ll grant you that, but as dolls go she’s definitely attractive, and there’s more than one man in this town who’d give his left eye to have her here in this situation.’
I said nothing.
‘Perhaps your tastes run elsewhere,’ he said, eyeing me carefully. ‘What is it you want, I wonder? We could clear the kitchen table and lay her across it, and perform our very own embalming, right here. How about it, John?’
I wanted to - you can’t know how badly I wanted to. He was going to kill me anyway, I assumed, but if I played along would that delay it? Could I buy time to escape by torturing Stephanie? In many ways I was in a situation with no repercussions: I was either dead or an eternal prisoner, so nothing I did in this house would ever leave it.
And Stephanie was beautiful; with her long blond hair and pale skin, she resembled Brooke. I could live out so many dreams
.
I wanted to, but I wouldn’t. Whatever Forman was, I was stronger. Whatever his plans were, I would block them. If he wanted me to hurt this girl, for whatever twisted reason, I’d make it my mission to keep her safe.
‘I’m not going to do anything,’ I said. ‘I’m not like you.’ ‘No, you’re not,’ he said, ‘but you’d be surprised at how much I’m like you.’
‘What are you going to do with me?’ I asked.
‘I’m not sure,’ said Forman. ‘Do you agree to answer my questions?’
‘About the demon I killed?’ I said. ‘Not a word.’
‘Then you’ll do fine in here, for now,’ he said, walking to a closet. The door was fitted with a padlock, and he opened it and gestured inside. I didn’t move, and he gestured again more sternly. ‘Don’t try my patience, John. You killed someone very important to me, and I’m not exactly pleased with you. But I happen to find you interesting, and I suggest you do everything you can not to jeopardise that.’