They Kill, page 28
That could’ve been me, he thought. Would’ve been me. If the driver of the Town Car hadn’t intercepted the Altima…. Because that’s what it had looked like, like the Town Car’s driver had purposely driven past him in order to hit the Altima. But that was ridiculous. Who would do such a thing? More likely the Town Car’s driver had wanted to pass him, and because of the storm, hadn’t been aware of the other driver. It had been an accident. A stupid, meaningless accident, nothing more.
Hand shaking, he pulled his phone from his pocket and called 911.
Chapter Fifteen
Sierra opened her eyes with a start. The last thing she remembered, she was heading straight for Courtney Marsh’s car and then – nothing.
She stood on a road, cornfields on either side of her. It was late in the day, and the sun was near the horizon, but there was still plenty of daylight left. She held out her arms to examine them, looked down at her chest and legs. She appeared uninjured. More than that, her clothes were clean, not a drop of blood on them.
From behind her came the sound of clapping, and she turned to see Corliss standing there. He was smiling, but his eyes glittered like two chips of ice.
“Well done,” he said.
“I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me that none of it really happened, that it was all a dream.”
“I’m afraid not. Everything happened, and the consequences are now permanent. Jeffrey is alive. Mandy, Randall, Grace, Stuart, and Erika are not. Neither is Courtney Marsh, poor girl. But all the others who died – including your parents and Marc – they’re still alive. Or if they aren’t, they’ve died natural deaths in the year since you drove Randall’s car into Courtney’s.”
“And me?” she asked.
“You died too. In this world, you’ve been dead for a year. Exactly one year. You’re also known as the woman whose mind snapped and for some unknown reason went on a killing spree. You can imagine your family’s reaction, especially Jeffrey’s, when they learned you were behind the wheel of Randall’s car that night.”
Assuming Corliss was telling the truth, she had taken lives and saved lives, and while her brother now lived, she was dead, and Jeffrey and their parents believed she was a murderous lunatic. Bad enough to lose a family member in a car accident, but to live with the knowledge that their daughter and sister had been a monster? She’d destroyed their lives too, just in a different way.
She felt a distant echo of an emotion that might have been sorrow, but it soon faded and she gave it no more thought.
“Did I pass the test?” she asked.
“With flying colors,” Corliss said. “Welcome to the Multitude. Only one task remains unfinished. You know what to do.”
She did.
Corliss knelt in the road and she stepped toward him, her hands becoming ebon claws. She took hold of Corliss’s head gently, almost lovingly. He gave her a final smile, this one peaceful, almost beatific.
“I now perform my final service to Entropy,” he said. “Praise Oblivion.”
“Praise Oblivion,” Sierra echoed, then jammed her clawed thumbs into Corliss’s eyes. She pushed inward, penetrating his brain, and once her thumbs were deep enough, she began moving them in slow circles, stirring shit around in there.
Corliss remained silent the entire time she did this, but his body spasmed as if he was having a seizure – which, all things considered, he probably was. When she withdrew her thumbs, Corliss slumped to the road, dead. She licked her thumbs clean as she watched his head and hands slowly withdraw into his suit. His arms and legs went next, and when his body was gone, the suit folded in on itself again and again, each time growing smaller, until at last it was gone.
Interesting. She’d have to look into getting herself an outfit like that.
She then raked the air, making her first rift. She stepped through and sealed it behind her.
This could be the end.
But it isn’t.
* * *
“I don’t understand how you can be so…so….”
“Handsome?” Jeffrey offered.
“Not sad,” Marc said.
The two men sat side by side on their new couch. They’d picked it out last month when Marc had moved into Jeffrey’s apartment. The couch was the first real purchase they’d made together, the first thing they had that wasn’t Jeffrey’s or Marc’s but theirs.
Both of their phones lay atop the glass coffee table. They’d been off all day because of the reporters who kept calling. They all wanted an exclusive interview with Jeffrey on the one-year anniversary of the day his sister had viciously murdered five people – four with a butcher knife and one with a car she’d stolen from one of her victims. Jeffrey and Marc had both taken the day off work for the same reason, so that reporters couldn’t find them at their places of employment. A few had tried knocking on their apartment door throughout the day, but they eventually gave up and left. Marc had suggested they leave town for a week or so, maybe take a trip somewhere peaceful and relaxing, but Jeffrey had wanted to remain in Bishop Hill. Mostly so he could be here for his parents. He’d spoken with them earlier. They’d been doing their best to avoid the media too, and they’d planned a quiet night at home, just like Jeffrey and Marc had.
“I know,” Jeffrey said, “but I can’t escape the feeling that what she did at the end, ramming Randall’s car into Courtney’s—”
“She did to save your life,” Marc finished. “Do you know how crazy that sounds?” He froze, eyes wide. “Oh my god, I shouldn’t have said that.”
“Said what?”
“You know – the C word.”
Jeffrey smiled.
“Yes, I know it sounds crazy, but the thought gives me some comfort. I’ll never know why Sierra killed those people. None of us will. She didn’t leave a note behind, and there were no signs that she was going to hurt anyone. She’d never been violent before. But the idea that she saved my life, even if she did a terrible thing to do it, means that the sister I knew was still somewhere inside her. Remember that voicemail she left? She was warning me that I was in danger. Even in her darkest moment, she was still capable of love. Maybe it’s not much, but I’ll take what I can get, you know?”
Marc put his hand around Jeffrey’s shoulders, and Jeffrey leaned against him. They sat like that, quiet, for a long time.
* * *
Jeffrey and Marc’s apartment was located on the ground floor of a building much nicer than the one where Sierra had lived. She stood outside their patio window. The blinds were drawn so they couldn’t see her – or her them – but her senses were much sharper now, and she had no trouble hearing them speak from out here.
She smiled.
“I’d murder the world for you, bro.”
Then she turned and sliced open a rift. On the other side lay a vast dark plain. In the distance, things larger than any mountain on earth moved in a stately procession, their mindless journey without beginning or end. Above them the sky was filled with winged creatures born from the fevered dreams of the mad and the dying. They dipped and darted, endlessly searching for prey. And high above the world, colors swirling slowly around a circle of infinite blackness – the same color as Corliss’s suit, incidentally – was the Gyre, the End of All Things.
Sierra had never seen anything more beautiful. She was looking forward to serving it alongside her new family.
She stepped into her future and was gone.
About this book
This is a FLAME TREE PRESS BOOK
Text copyright © 2019 Tim Waggoner
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
FLAME TREE PRESS, 6 Melbray Mews, London, SW6 3NS, UK, flametreepress.com
Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.
Thanks to the Flame Tree Press team, including: Taylor Bentley, Frances Bodiam, Federica Ciaravella, Don D’Auria, Chris Herbert, Matteo Middlemiss, Josie Mitchell, Mike Spender, Will Rough, Cat Taylor, Maria Tissot, Nick Wells, Gillian Whitaker. The cover is created by Flame Tree Studio with thanks to Nik Keevil and Shutterstock.com.
FLAME TREE PRESS is an imprint of Flame Tree Publishing Ltd. flametreepublishing.com. A copy of the CIP data for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.
HB ISBN: 978-1-78758-257-6, PB ISBN: 978-1-78758-255-2, ebook ISBN: 978-1-78758-258-3 | Also available in FLAME TREE AUDIO | Created in London and New York
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Other titles available by Tim Waggoner:
The Mouth of the Dark
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Tim Waggoner, They Kill
