He spun the cap off the bottle and brought the neck to his lips. The booze filled his mouth and he savored the sweet taste for a moment before swallowing. A little shiver of pleasure rippled through him. Then he took another little sip, screwed the cap back on, and returned the bottle to the table.
A faint sound from the other side of the room made him turn around. There was no one there. But he’d heard it, of that he was certain. A woman’s voice. He sighed. He occasionally heard voices when he was alone. Sometimes he could even make out words. Once in a great while the voice was distinct enough to recognize. And always it was someone who could not actually be there, at least not in a physical form. These were people from his distant past he knew to be long dead, ghosts he supposed he would carry with him until his final days.
But this was different. He wasn’t certain why, but he felt it on a level that resonated in his bones. A little tingle of fear started at the base of his spine and worked its way up. Instinct drove him to pick up the bottle again. This time when he screwed the cap off, he tossed it on the table and drank deeply from the bottle. The influx of booze settled him and drove back the chill. He carried the bottle by the neck as he paced the width and length of the small room, paranoia driving him to conduct a search, even though there was plainly no place for an intruder to hide.
Except…
He dropped to his knees, grunting as the old joints creaked. He lifted the edge of a b lanket and peered beneath the small bed. No one was there, of course, with the exception of a few crawly bugs and his personal effects. The tattered old backpack he’d carried on his travels through Europe and Africa in the 70s. Two boxes, a small one and a somewhat larger one filled with some of his favorite books. He sighed and stood again. He moved to the other side of the bed and sat down. He swigged from the bottle one more time before setting it on the floor. Then he reached beneath the bed and withdrew the smaller of the two boxes, an old cigar box with a length of twine tied around it. He untied the loose knot and flipped the lid open.
The box contained an assortment of faded pictures and other mementos of the life he’d left behind so long ago. He’d carried it with him everywhere for decades, even Below, where most of the banished people were stripped of their personal belongings. But though the box was important to him, only in his most melancholy moments did he remove its contents to examine and reflect upon. The last time had been more than a year ago, when he’d first heard rumblings of the threat that was out there.
In the time since then, he’d worked hard to prepare for the coming confrontation, and the heavily fortified Camp Whiskey was the fruit of those labors. The goal had been to establish a haven impenetrable by any enemy. Thanks to the resources and contacts of Jack Paradise, the community enjoyed the protection of a small but world-class army. The camp should undeniably be the safest place for the survivors of Below. And yet there remained intangibles that might yet make them vulnerable, things they couldn’t anticipate.
Things like the treachery of Wanda Lewis, who had once been a significant player in the plot that ended the Master’s reign of terror. Jim could not imagine how so strong a woman had been swayed to the other side. He had taken her loyalty for granted and bringing her into the fold had been a priority. But she’d been unusually difficult to locate, even given the slippery nature of many House of Blood survivors. She resurfaced a month before her attempt on Allyson Vanover’s life, explaining that she’d been busy eluding a particularly tenacious group of would-be assassins. Which seemed a believable enough cover story. But Jim began to hear reports of some strange behavior on Wanda’s part. She was seen talking to herself, appearing to have animated conversations with people who weren’t there. Once she was spotted engaging in a paganistic prayer ritual in the woods. There was nothing worthy of condemnation in these behaviors, but they were far enough removed from the Wanda Lewis he’d known to be troubling. And so Jack Paradise had passed along instruction to the soldiers to keep a watchful eye on her. Which had turned out to be a good thing for Allyson Vanover.
He was thankful Allyson was still with them. He had a strong feeling there was more to her story than she was willing to share. The question of why Wanda had attempted to kill her remained unanswered and presented a host of bothersome questions. Allyson’s account of things had been too vague to provide any real answers. But his gut told him Allyson was not a threat. She clearly loved Chad, and Jim sensed she was struggling toward an inner change for the better. He could appreciate that.
As he sorted through the stack of mementos-mostly age-yellowed photographs-Jim reflected on the uncountable number of mistakes he’d made in his life. At the top of that list, as ever, was the impetuous decision to “kill” his public persona. He’d felt so overwhelmed then, with the press and their lies, with evading an American court system determined to make him serve hard time for a supposed act of public indecency, and with the pressure to record a new album that could never live up to ludicrously high expectations. And, of course, his judgment had been clouded by the drugs, enough so that faking his death and going underground had seemed a perfectly reasonable way out. He’d like to go back to that time and force his younger self not to go down that road. In the first few years after his “death,” he’d occasionally entertained notions of resurfacing. But something always held him back. Then, as the years stretched into decades, he began to realize he would never return to public life. For better or worse, this twilight existence was his lot.
He came to a picture of Pam, his old love, and his eyes misted. The picture showed her seated outside a cafe in Paris, not long before the end of his old life. She was looking away, not wanting to be photographed. She had just learned of the crazy thing he was planning and was unhappy about it. He wanted so much to talk to her again, tell her she’d been right, that he’d made a horrible mistake. But she was dead and beyond reach now. He touched the photo with the tip of a shaking finger and imagined he could feel the softness of her flesh again. The photo slipped from his fingers and tumbled to the dusty cabin floor. He was reaching to retrieve it when he caught sight of the photograph that had been beneath it.
His heart lurched.
And now the entire stack of old photos and mementos slipped from his suddenly numb fingers and fluttered across the floor. The new photo-the one he knew had never been there before-landed upright amidst a sea of white. He felt a tightness in his chest as he looked at it again. The picture showed a nude woman on a plush bed. Her eyes were glassy and her face was twisted in a frozen expression of agony. She had been disemboweled by some means not immediately apparent. Blood was everywhere and a small loop of intestine was visible. Jim forced himself to look beyond the gore for some hint as to why an interloper had seen fit to insert the gruesome photograph in the middle of a stack of older pictures he looked at so rarely. At first no obvious solution presented itself. But then he realized there was something familiar about the dead woman…
His stomach knotted as the realization hit him: “Ms.Wickman-”
The wicked witch was dead. The proof was at his feet. This should be cause for celebration. Surely there was no longer anything to fear now that she was gone. Why, then, did he not f eel like celebrating? But he knew why, really. It was the inexplicable appearance of the picture. That and simple instinct. Something very wrong was happening and he didn’t have the first clue what it might be. An unacceptable state of affairs. The thing to do now was summon Jack Paradise and begin an investigation.