“But that didn’t prevent the Intercessor from waking up and hitting the road.”
“Which is why I think reconciling with her wasn’t enough. It might’ve been an important part of the puzzle, but there’s still a piece missing. I think I need to tell her parents what I did, let them know how ashamed and guilt-ridden I was – and still am – for what I said to her that day on the porch.”
“So if you confess to them, does that count as atonement?”
“I don’t know. Maybe? I can’t think of anything else to do.”
“All right, let’s go home so you can grab some clothes and—”
“There’s no time for that. We need to see Aashrita’s parents as soon as possible.”
She didn’t know how long they had before the Intercessor managed to break through into their world, but whatever time they had, she knew they couldn’t afford to waste it.
“Okay. Tell me where to go.”
Lori did, and Larry executed a U-turn in the middle of the street – almost hitting a delivery truck – and pushed the Kia’s gas pedal to the floor, roaring back in the direction they’d come from. Lori hoped they weren’t already too late.
* * *
“You sure this is where you want to stop?”
It was after five p.m., and Reeny had parked her Altima in the lot of a small shopping center, near an ice cream shop called Sprinkles. The wipers moved back and forth in a steady rhythm, keeping the windshield clear enough to give her a good view of the place. The lights were on inside, and three people sat at a small round table – two women, one man. Since the spots directly in front of the shop had been taken, she’d had to park a couple of rows back, and she couldn’t make out any specific details about the trio. She’d never been to Sprinkles before. Brian’s favorite ice cream place was the Cold Stone near where they lived. She hadn’t even known there was an ice cream shop here until Brian had told her to pull into the lot.
“This is the right place,” Brian said. “They’re inside. I can feel them.”
She didn’t know who they were, and she really didn’t care. She was becoming increasingly concerned for her son. His voice had a strange, flat quality to it, and his manner seemed older than his years. Quite a bit older. Then again, she supposed being resurrected was bound to mature a person.
Without saying another word, Brian unfastened his seat belt, opened the door, and got out of the car. He shut the door behind him and started walking toward Sprinkles, oblivious to the rain. Reeny had an umbrella in the car, and she wished he’d waited for her to grab it, but then again, the rain would hopefully wash away the worst of the blood from his neck wound, so that was good. She decided to forgo the umbrella as well, for the same reason. She got out, shut the door, and started running after Brian. Even if she’d carried the umbrella, she still would’ve run. She always did, and her husband Charles never failed to tease her about it.
Are you afraid you’re going to melt? You might get a little cranky sometimes, but you’re hardly the Wicked Witch of the West.
After the…incident at the mall, she and Brian had gone looking for Lori. But they hadn’t been able to find her. Reeny tried calling her, but she didn’t answer. They drove to Get Moving! and found the place swarming with police and reporters. Then they tried Lori’s apartment, but when they knocked, no one answered the door.
As they drove away from the apartment complex, Brian said, “I don’t understand. I should be able to sense her. It’s why I’m here. But I can’t.”
She hadn’t been sure what he was talking about, but it didn’t matter. All she cared about was that she had her son back, and together they would punish Lori for her role in causing his temporary – she didn’t want to think the word death, didn’t want to engage with the awful reality of it, so she let her thought drift away. She wasn’t certain exactly what Lori had done to contribute to Brian’s…current condition. But Brian insisted his aunt had done something, and as much as Reeny loved her sister, she believed her son. She had to. She was his mother, after all.
But after failing to find so much as a trace of Lori, Brian said that they needed help. She could tell by the irritation in his voice that this was galling to him. She didn’t like it either, would’ve preferred to continue searching with Brian, just the two of them. Keep it in the family, you know? But Reeny didn’t object. If Brian wanted something, it was her job as his mother to make sure he got it, whatever it was. Hence, their stopping at Sprinkles. She wondered if Brian simply wanted to take a break from their search, maybe discuss a new strategy with her over ice cream. Could he still eat? She wasn’t clear on how this whole coming back from the dead thing worked.
Brian reached Sprinkles’ door and pushed it open. An old-fashioned jingling of bells announced their presence, but there was something off about the sound, and Reeny realized it was some kind of recording. She found this sad. Was Brian only a recording too, a facsimile, an imitation of the boy he’d been? She didn’t want to examine this thought too closely, so she put it aside and followed her son into the shop.
The first thing she noticed was the blood. It was everywhere. On the floor, the walls, the ceiling…. A half-dozen bodies in various states of mutilation lay on the floor, where they hadn’t been visible to her from the car – four adults and two children. There was blood on the front counter and on the large menu hanging on the wall behind it.
Three living customers sat at a table, each holding ice cream cones. Reeny couldn’t tell what flavors they had, but their ice cream was dotted with blood. Sprinkles, indeed.
One of the women had a long gray braid that undulated in the air like a serpent. The other had clawed hands, sharp teeth, and uneven tufts of fur covering her skin. The man looked as if he suffered from some kind of hideous skin disease. His shirt was open, exposing a lumpy mass of discolored growths on his chest. There were smaller ones on his neck, face, and hands, as if whatever was wrong with him was spreading outward from his chest to infect the rest of his body. Their clothes were soaked with blood, and if Reeny had had any doubt who was responsible for the dead bodies scattered on the floor, she no longer did.
The three looked at Reeny and Brian as they entered, and the cat woman hissed. The one with a braid put a hand on the woman’s shoulder.
“It’s all right, Katie.” She smiled. “They’re our kind of people.”
Reeny hadn’t recognized Justin at first. Part of that was due to the obscene growths covering his flesh, but a bigger part was that he was so out of place in this nightmarish scene – the blood, the bodies…. She didn’t know Justin well. Lori hadn’t been seeing him all that long, and while Reeny had invited them over for dinner once, Justin hadn’t talked much about himself. He’d talked about his job as a lab tech, when he talked at all. Justin had struck Reeny as a nice enough guy, not particularly complicated – which was a point in his favor after Larry, who was all complication – but he’d also come across as anxious, almost neurotic, and she didn’t think he and Lori were going to work out as a couple. This was fine with her, as she thought her Sissy could do a lot better.
“Hello, Justin,” she said.
He started to speak but was overcome by a sudden burst of violent coughing. Small black chunks were expelled from his mouth to land on the table, as well as on the ice cream cones of his companions. Neither of the women seemed bothered by this, and the cat woman even licked one of the gobbets from her cone and purred as she chewed it. Reeny had heard the expression coughing up a lung before, but this was the first time she’d actually seen it happen. Brian seemed delighted by the man’s discomfort. He clapped his hands and laughed as the man struggled to get control of himself.
“Sorry,” Justin gasped when his coughing fit subsided. “We’re still having some trouble adjusting to each other.” His voice changed then, sounded like a chorus of voices speaking in unison. “Trouble, yes.”
We’re? Reeny thought.
“You two know each other?” the woman with the braid asked.
“Yeah,” Justin said. “She’s Lori’s sister. The boy’s Lori’s nephew, Brian.” His voice changed again. “Lori bitch. We no like.”
The woman with the braid smiled, displaying her teeth. “Well isn’t that just wonderful,” she said. “Won’t you join us? Justin, would you please pull up a table for our new friends?”
Justin rose, shuffled over to the nearest table – the surface of which was speckled with blood – and dragged it over next to the trio’s. The table’s metal legs slid through blood on the floor and made streaks on the tile. He then brought over a couple chairs and set them down. There was blood on them too, and he tried to wipe it off with his hand but only managed to smear it around. He gestured for Reeny and Brian to sit.
Brian did so without hesitation.
“Would you like some ice cream, sweetie?” Reeny asked him.
“Yes,” he said.
Brian might not be able to digest ice cream, she thought, or even taste it, but maybe he’d enjoy the texture. She walked over to the counter, stepping carefully around both blood and corpses. When she was behind the counter, she saw a seventh body, that of a young woman wearing a blue apron with the Sprinkles logo on the front. There were copious amounts of blood on the floor, but no sign of the girl’s head. She wondered where it was.
She made Brian a cone with a double scoop of butter pecan – his favorite – and took it over to the table. She didn’t get any ice cream for herself. She didn’t need the calories. And she didn’t have much of an appetite at the moment.
