Chapter 5 – Chap 5

I pulled into my driveway around 7:30 AM, exhausted, my grief over Benny and Candice still fresh. Even if Whispering Hills was nothing more than a waypoint for the dead, they at least deserved respect for the fact that they used to be actual living people. My body aching, I plodded into my living room, shedding my work clothes on the way, and flopped down on my favorite chair to just take a breather after the long night I’d had. My doorbell rang then, followed by a couple short sharp knocks, and I groaned.

Rising to my feet, I gimped back to the door and opened it to see Beck standing there, wide eyed and nervous, chewing her lower lip into near-bloody ribbons. “Beck,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

“I couldn’t wait until tonight to talk to you,” she said hurriedly. She pulled back the arm of the gray sweatshirt to reveal a large blistered patch that spanned her forearm from wrist to elbow. “I found this just a half hour ago.” Her eyes were terrified and pleading with me to help her. Sighing, I tilted my head.

“Come on in. I’ll make some coffee.”

Beck perched gingerly on one of my kitchen stools and smiled briefly when I offered her a large cup of freshly made coffee. She took a short sip, then looked up at me. “So…what’s happening at Whispering Hills, Maryann? What does this horrible itchy rash mean?”

I took a seat across from her, staring silently at my coffee cup before I pulled up my sleeve to reveal my own rash. It had now spread and covered almost my entire arm and the back of my hand. “It means he’s marked you, is what it means,” I said softly. “You now likely because you helped me. For some reason, he seems to really have a fixation on me and I intend to find out why.” I took a sip of my coffee before I continued on. Beck didn’t have to ask who I was referring to as “he”; her paler-than-usual face was so white that she looked frozen there.

“Benny told me that Whispering Hills is essentially a halfway point for dead souls, that the ones that live there yet are awaiting judgment. He also told me that the place burned to the ground 91 years ago during a huge fire – I read about that in a very old newspaper – and that it comes back every year around the same time to, I don’t know, collect more dead, I suppose. But that big fire was set by Bridgette and her sisters in an effort to kill him. It didn’t work, obviously; more than half the town was destroyed before they finally put that fire out.”

“So, then, obviously he can’t be killed with fire. So how do you kill him?” Beck fidgeted with her coffee mug as unbeknownst to both of us, a wicked darkness had already slipped in through the minimally open window in my living room and was slowly and carefully spreading its tentacles over all in blind search of us.

Oblivious to this, I mused, “That I’m not sure. I wanted to go slink around Bridgette’s house to see if maybe there were any clues there that could help me get rid of him.” I then paused, eyeing her. “You don’t know about that one, do you?” When she shook her head, I snorted. “He killed her right in front of me.”

Beck’s hands flew up to her mouth as she gaped at me in shock. “He killed Bridgette?! The sweet old historian? Why?!”

“Probably because she helped me too,” I replied bitterly. “She helped me, Benny helped me, he killed them both. You helped me. He’ll come for you too.” I stood up, rejuvenated from my daily dose of caffeine. “I want to talk to Jeanette about this too, see what she knows.” I twirled my keys around my finger. “Want to come along?”

Beck stood up and shook her head. “No, I think I’m going to head back home. This whole situation scares the hell out of me and now you’re telling me he’s marked me? I’d rather take my chances at home!”

Suddenly the brightness of my kitchen dimmed considerably as that same black oily shadow rolled leisurely right into my kitchen. Its blazing green eyes were locked not on me, but on Beck, and I realized with a jolt and a shudder that the Wanderer meant to take her right here right now. I searched around for anything I could use to defend against him, but froze in my tracks when the same strange and somehow infinitely more wicked voice came almost purring through the air, strung with malice. “Maaaaaaarrrrryyyaaaaannn,” the Wanderer rumbled. “IIIIII’mmmm coooommmmiiinnng fooooorrrr yoooouuuu.”

Filled with a courage I was unfamiliar with that pounded through my body like a lightning streak, I just nodded. “I see you, Wanderer. And I’ll be waiting for you.” I put a protective hand on Beck’s shoulder even as she cowered before him, visibly trembling with fear. “And you aren’t taking her either. You’ll have to kill me first.”

The Wanderer’s eyes flew to mine, and I could feel him smile. “Ooohhhh nnnoooo, Maaaaaarrrrryyyyaaaannn,” he chuckled, a low nasty sound that made my hair stand on end. “IIII haaaavvvve ssssppeeecciiaaalll plllaaaannnsss foooorrrr yoooouuu.” He kept holding his eyes on mine for only the briefest of moments more before he let out a growl and dove for Beck. She screamed and threw her arms up to protect her face, but it wasn’t enough.

Pinned in place by the shadow that was even now lifting Beck into the air like she weighed little more than a sack of feathers, I couldn’t so much as twitch a finger as the Wanderer coiled his shadowy tendrils around her slender body and throat and squeezed. Beck’s eyes bulged as she began clawing at the smoky tendril wrapped tightly around her neck, choking and wheezing. The Wanderer paid her no mind. “Yoooouuu wiiiillll coooommmmme toooo sssssaaaaavvve heeeerrrr,” he hissed mockingly, “aaannndd thhheeeeennnn IIIII wiiilllllll deeesssstttrrroooyyy yooouuu.” With these final words, he winked out, a struggling choking Beck still clutched tightly in his shadowy embrace as she disappeared, the last glimpse I got of her that of her pale purple cheeks and glassy terrified bulging eyes.

I cried out in anger and frustration as I paced my kitchen like a madwoman. My thought swirled around inside my head, colliding against each other with quite the clamor. The Wanderer took Beck alive knowing I would try and rescue her. Benny said my light was brighter than most; the Wanderer put out my house lights to accommodate his accompanying darkness, but he couldn’t put out the sun. Perhaps the way to kill the Wanderer lay in a way of light that couldn’t be turned off. I glanced at my watch. I knew I would eventually have to go back, but I wanted that to be the last on the list, especially since there was a very good chance that whatever happened at Whispering Hills later today, I wouldn’t be coming back from it. I decided it was time to find Jeanette and find out her role in this whole supernatural mess. After all, it was essentially her fault I was in this shit anyway.

After a quick Internet search of the Jeanettes in my area, I found one on the north end of town that had apparently lived here for at least the past thirty years. I drove to the address listed and was mildly surprised to see a well kept little house painted in bright colors and with beautiful flowers blooming out front. I’d been half expecting I parked right in front of the house and strolled up the walk, preparing to knock on the door, but it opened before I even climbed the porch stairs and I saw Jeanette there staring at me, shrouded almost completely by the darkness on the other side of the door.

“I figured you’d show up at some point,” she said listlessly. “I knew from the getgo you were a special one.”

“Then you also know why I’m here,” I said flatly. “So let’s just skip the small talk and get right into it, why don’t we.”

She didn’t respond, only backed up and opened the door wider in obvious reluctance. I stepped into her home, and in sharp and unwelcome contrast to the beautiful styles of her home’s furnishings and trappings, for the first time I could clearly see even in the near-absence of light just how terrible Jeanette really looked, an alarming difference from the cool composed severe woman I’d first met only a few days ago. Her skin was mottled gray and black with what looked like patches of rot here and there. Her eyes were yellow with broken blood vessels scattered all over; some unidentifiable black substance was crusted in the corners. Her hair had fallen out in huge patches and I could see what looked like maggots feasting on the weeping open sores that covered her scalp. Pustules and blistered covered her arms, face and chest. She turned her head away as if embarrassed by my scrutiny, and I was treated to a spectacularly gory view of the necrotic bullet hole in her left temple.

“Jeanette, what happened to you?”

She sighed and took a deep breath. “My name isn’t Jeanette. I lied to you. My name is Marcia.”

I just gaped at her. “Marcia? Bridgette’s oldest sister? They thought you were dead!”

“I am,” she laughed bitterly. “I have been dead for years. I couldn’t bear to be under HIS control anymore, so on my 20th birthday I took my father’s old revolver and put it to my head and blew my brains out. That was how I managed to escape the Wanderer. That’s also how I managed to come by all this,” she added through torn and rotten lips, gesturing dully to her home. “He punished me for escaping by taking my soul and leaving my body to live dead and rotting like this, but he lets me keep this…bit of beauty…and my meager shell of an existence as long as I continue to bring him fresh souls every year.” She pulled a ragged breath in as if it pained her to do so. “But when I saw you, saw your soul, the brightness of your light, I couldn’t bring myself to…to just give you over to him like that. I tried to refuse, and in return, he took everyone I cared about before marking my granddaughter.”

“So who is the Wanderer exactly?” I asked. “Where did he come from? And what does he want with me?”

Marcia just laughed, a cackle with an undercurrent of audible insanity threaded through it. “I stood in the Crossroads at 3:33 AM and he came for me just like they said he would! It was true! It was all true!” Still cackling, she began to dance maniacally back and forth. “I tried to burn him down, but I only burned the town! He took me and I belong to him and now he’s coming to take you toooooooo-!” The last word spiralled up to an ear-deafening shriek before her hands floated up like two dead birds and tore out her own throat. A black sticky substance shot from the gaping wound in her throat and sprayed my face and chest with warm ichor. I sputtered and cried out in disgust, leaping back while struggling frantically to clean the substance from my face. Then Marcia’s rotting and time-ravaged body collapsed to the floor and melted into a viscous puddle of pus and blood. Finally after all the years she remained the Wanderer’s servant, now she was at rest.

I didn’t even bother to clean up the mess, now distracted fixedly on a large family tree that was plastered on the darkened hallway wall. For reasons unknown to me, I stepped up closer to examine the tree. My breath caught as I discovered MY name in that family line, and with shaking fingers, I traced the line back until I came to rest on another familiar name: my mother’s name, Michelline DeLuca, daughter of Daniel DeLuca and…Marcia DeLuca. I frowned as the implications hit me like a freight train. If what I was seeing was correct, Marcia DeLuca was my grandmother!

Suddenly filled with a sobering rage, the frustrations of the last few days finally crashing down around me, I let out a scream at my ceiling. The Wanderer had taken everyone who had helped me, and my own grandmother, my flesh and blood, was the one who had gotten me caught up in this whole thing! No wonder the Wanderer wanted me so badly. I bore the blood of the only one who had ever escaped him.

Finally I calmed down after a few moments, my rational thoughts taking control once more. Beck was still in danger and the Wanderer wanted me alive for whatever reason, so I began preparing myself for the upcoming confrontation. As I packed up the things I was sure I would need along the way, I chuckled to myself. I would use my light to send the Wanderer back to whatever hell he crawled out from…or die trying.