When he opened his eyes, he was standing face to face with Morgan. He yelped and took a step back.
“Hi, Kyle,” she said. Her form stood in the path of the water, but the water did not affect her. The stream went through her and found a spot on the ground.
Kyle turned away, only to face Mary and Eddie holding hands. “Kyle, put some clothes on, we don’t need Eddie to see you like that.” She looked at the faceless boy. “Well, it doesn’t look like he will be seeing anything any more.” She laughed, and so did Eddie. Blood squirted out of the hole and arced until it hit the ground.
“No, please don’t cover up,” another voice said. Kyle turned in the direction of the unknown voice, and there was Chet.
“Is that what you were married to, Mary? It’s so tiny, I’m sorry for you,” said another voice. It was the voice of Susie.
“What do you want?” Kyle said, almost walking in circles to see everyone.
“We want you to admit what you did to us. We want you to pay,” Morgan said.
“You’re all just in my head. You’re not real! Go away!”
“We’ll go away Kyle, once you are dead,” Mary said. “I can understand what you did to Chet over there. He did deserve it.”
“Hey,” said Chet.
“I guess Susie deserved it, too. But Morgan? Morgan, Kyle? Victor’s own mother!”
“Don’t you fucking do this to me, Mary. You’re the one who fucking told me that I needed to get rid of Morgan, and I did. Even in death you’re trying to fucking pin your shit on me.”
“Did it feel good, Kyle? Now you have Victor to yourself?”
“Yeah, Victor is coming with me to California, but he’s an empty fucking shell.” Kyle turned off the water. Fog and steam made it harder to see the apparitions. “And no, it didn’t feel good having to kill Morgan. In fact, I feel more like a fucking monster.”
“Careful what you say Kyle, it could cost you everything,” Mary said as she dissipated along with everyone else.
“You killed my mom?”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Victor stood by one of the rows of lockers. “You killed my mom?”
Kyle’s heart pounced as if it were trying to escape his body. With everything he had done the past few of days, it was a surprise that he even had a beating heart. “No, I didn’t.”
“I just heard you say that you killed her. Who were you talking to?”
“No one,” Kyle said, wrapping the towel around his waist. “I meant that it felt as though I killed her. Because I couldn’t reach her.”
“Don’t fucking lie to me, Kyle!” Victor yelled. His body tightened, eyes filling with rage, jaw locked and ready to pounce. “You just said you killed her. Did you not even try to reach her?”
“I did, she was just out of reach!”
“Liar!” Victor screamed, reaching for the shotgun Kyle left by the lockers. He pointed it toward Kyle, finger on the trigger and ready to fire.
“Don’t you try to fire that thing,” Kyle warned, with good reason. The Winchester still hadn’t been cleaned, and Kyle was sure it was either not operational, or it would blow back on the boy. “There’s a good chance that if you pull that trigger, it will blow up in your face.”
“Good! I want to die, I want you to die. Fuck everyone!” Tears ran down his face. “My whole world has gone up in flames, and it’s all because of you!” Victor pulled the trigger.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Crank. Click. Click.
He pumped the shotgun and tried firing again. Nothing happened. Victor grabbed the weapon by the barrel and ran toward Kyle. But the second he entered the shower, the boy slipped on the soap-filled tile. The shotgun flew out of his grasp and went wild into the air, smacking into one of the nearby lockers. The gun went off, exploding the slug from the barrel.
Victor lay flat on his back, unconscious. He had hit his head on the floor. Kyle slowly walked to the boy.
“Victor,” he said shaking the boy with one hand and holding the towel with the other.
Albert swung the door open, his rifle lifted in a firing position. “What the hell happened?” he yelled before he could see Kyle.
“Victor slipped on the ground. The gun fell and went off.” He looked back down to the unconscious boy. “Victor!”
“Get dressed,” Albert said pushing Kyle out of the way. “I’ll take him to Doctor Greenly.”
Kyle quickly put on the clothes he had picked. He didn’t want to miss where Albert was taking Victor. He lifted the boy carefully and began walking to the exit, but stopped and looked at the dent in one of the lockers. “It fell, huh?” he said as he continued to make his way to the exit.
Kyle grabbed the Winchester and followed Albert out. They headed for Doctor Greenly’s lab, but didn’t enter the same door.
“Is this not the place?”
“No, there’s a different room for us. You don’t want Greenly treating him with the same instruments he uses for his experiments, do you?”
“I guess not.”
A few doors down from the lab, Albert stopped. “This door. Open it.”
Kyle reached and opened the door. Albert stepped inside and laid Victor on one of the medical beds.
“Where did all this stuff come from?” Kyle asked.
“We weren’t the first survivors here. All this stuff was left behind. I’ll go get Greenly so he can take a look at him.”
Albert walked out of the room. Kyle stared at Victor, who was lying on the bed like a poor defenseless animal. He was so weak, so badly beaten, both physically and mentally. He rubbed his hands down Victor’s hair. There was nothing he could do. Victor had figured out that it was Kyle who was behind his mother’s murder.
Many things were running through his head. Would Victor wake up screaming at the top of his lungs? Would he even remember what happened in the showers? Could he be convinced that it was all a dream? No. Hopefully Albert would be able to tell Victor he had slipped on the tile.
It’s easy, he thought, I’ll just have to kill Albert. Yeah, that’s it, kill Albert. Wait, but if I kill Albert, everyone will be suspicious of me. I got it; I’ll kill all of them. It’s perfect. One by one I’ll take them out. Before Victor wakes up, I’ll have to kill everyone. Kill everyone, and me and Victor can go to California. Go to Jasmine, be the family that I should have had. But first I have to kill everyone.
Kyle smiled as he reached for a scalpel. He grasped the weapon in his hand and raised his head forward. Directly in front of him was a mirror that reminded him of the mirror that had hung on the wall of the bedroom he shared with Mary. He looked into it and tried to stare at his reflection, but all he saw was his past, his memories of better times now completely forgotten. He saw an image of him throwing Eddie into the air at a park. They spun in circles as the scenery around them burned and crumbled. The boy’s face was full of life, full of joy and happiness. He shuddered at what he saw next. The man standing in front of him with wild eyes, a half-cocked smile with a few teeth poking through the opened mouth. Scabs already healing over themselves. Wet hair falling down the side of his face completed the look. There was no doubt about it, he loathed this image. It was a reflection of the man he had become.
Kyle looked at the boy and then at the scalpel. Water welled up in his eyes as he dropped the weapon back onto the medical tray. Tears ran freely down his face as he felt sorrow for what he’d done to Mary, Eddie, Susie, the corpse of Angel, the confused man on the street, Chet, and now Morgan.