6  

Reggie sat huddled at the head of her bed. She could barely stretch out on her mattress, much less sleep. She turned on all the lights.

Quinn was alive. And he had been in her bedroom. Reggie tried to shake the terror away.

She’d read through two study guides, a magazine, and four comic books by the time the sun rose, and then she decided to clean her room. Finally, at 8:30, she thought it was late enough to call the Coles’.

Their answering machine picked up after a few rings, but as Reggie was leaving a message she heard a click, and Aaron’s mother’s voice came over the line.

“Oh, Reggie, is that you? I’m sorry, we’ve been screening our calls. There’s been some press.”

“Is Aaron okay? Is he home?”

“He’s home, yes.” Dr. Cole’s voice was strained. “We got him out early this morning.”

“Is it… would it be all right if I came over?”

Reggie could hear the woman’s hesitation.

“Please,” Reggie begged. “Just for a bit. I’d like to see him, see if there’s anything I can do.”

“And I’m sure he’d like to see you,” Dr. Cole replied. “I guess that would be fine.”

As Reggie was pulling on her jeans the memory of Quinn’s fingers creeping up her leg turned her stomach. She attempted, unsuccessfully, to block it out. So instead, she spent most of the fifteen-minute walk over to Aaron’s house trying to figure out how to tell him about Quinn. Or if she should even tell him at all.

But all thoughts of Quinn vanished when Reggie rounded the corner onto Aaron’s block. Dr. Cole had vastly understated when she’d said there’d been “some press.”

Parked cars and TV news vans lined the street in front of the Coles’ house. Police held back the crowd milling on the edge of the lawn, and a few cameramen had set up across the street. Local media had found out about a possible new lead in the Quinn Waters case. Reggie imagined a mob of townspeople gathering like the angry villagers from Frankenstein, with Aaron as their monster. The stores downtown were probably having a rush for pitchforks and torches at that very moment.

She cut through a few neighboring backyards and made her way to the Coles’ back door. Aaron’s father answered, his face taut with concern, but he smiled when he saw it was Reggie.

“Hello, Reggie. I was worried you were one of the reporters. Come on in.”

“Oh, Reggie!” Dr. Cole pulled Reggie into a bear hug when she saw her. Her eyes were red from crying.

Reggie had often found solace with the Coles, in no small part to Aaron’s parents, who treated her like their own daughter. Dr. Cole was a locally well-known therapist who had a weekly radio show on a community channel, and Mr. Cole was an engineer. They were kind and intelligent, and Reggie relished the normalcy of their household, where voices were never raised, meals were home-cooked and on time, and both parents were around to kiss their son goodnight.

She looked around her. The house was spotless as ever, but all the drapes were drawn, and jazz played from the sound system to drown out the activity outside.

“How is he?”

“He’s got bruises all down his arms. The Wennemack Police are going to have one hell of a lawsuit on their hands when I’m done with them.” Dr. Cole sighed. “He’s been in his bedroom since we got back. He won’t talk, he won’t eat—and you know Aaron always has a healthy appetite. He’s exhausted but can’t sleep.”

“When did you guys get home?” Reggie asked.

“Sometime around two,” Mr. Cole said. “I thought they were going to keep us there all night, but then that Mr. Bloch showed up.”

“I don’t know what that man did,” said Dr. Cole, “but ten minutes after he arrived we were signing Aaron out and packing him into the car.”

“With a warning not to leave town, of course,” Mr. Cole added.

Reggie wondered just what cards Eben held, that he’d been able to make good on his promise to get Aaron released so quickly.

“Well, I think I’ll go up then,” she said.

Dr. Cole put a hand on Reggie’s shoulder. “Honey, I just want you to be prepared when you see him. He’s in a post-traumatic state. Community Mental Health wanted to place him in a hospital. It’s a good thing I know a few people on the board—and Dr. Unger, of course.” She sucked in her lips and took a breath. “Aaron will be fine, but right now he’s a little fragile.”

“Don’t worry. I just want to see how he’s doing,” Reggie said, thinking that Aaron’s mom had no idea how tough her son actually was. “Thanks.”

She made her way to Aaron’s room. The door was shut, but she could hear both the radio and the television blaring inside. She knocked loudly and called out, but there was no answer.

Puzzled, Reggie gently pushed the door open and peered inside. Every light in the room was on, along with all three computer monitors, the TV, and the stereo. The noise was deafening. Aaron’s bedroom had never been what one would call “tidy,” but these days it was a disaster. Energy drink cans littered the floor, and a glacier of printouts leaned against the computer desk. The ripped and tattered remnants of overnight shipping envelopes were scattered everywhere. Reggie assumed they were from the books piled all around. Every title had something to do with ghosts, psychics, secret societies, psychology, or demonic possession. The place had once looked like the bedroom of a teenage horror buff and computer geek. Now it seemed more like the den of an occult-obsessed lunatic.

Aaron slouched in an office chair, wrapped in a blanket. Reggie tried not to stare. His face was drawn and puffy, his eyes sunken and haunted. Though the blanket covered the bruises on his arms, Reggie could see his ripped fingernails scabbed with blood, as if he had been clawing at brick walls. He hugged himself, rocking back and forth in his seat.

Reggie went forward and kneeled in front of him. Only then did he seem to notice her.

“When I found out… that they had you…” She broke off. “I was so worried.” She put her arms out to hug him, but he shied away from her touch. He shook his head.

“Sorry.” His voice was harsh and clipped.

“What did they do to you?” she asked.

“What they do. What they always do.” Aaron cocked his head. Reggie could almost see the effort he made to focus. Then he shut his eyes tightly and twitched. “I can’t see, Reggie,” he said desperately, starting to rock again. “I can’t see out of my head.”

Dread creased Reggie’s forehead. She had seen Aaron scared before, plenty of times, but never shattered like this. She’d always thought his was a mind of unbreakable logic, but the Vours had broken it. There was no way she could tell him about Quinn, or much of anything else, right now. Anger at the monsters that did this to him seethed inside her.

“Shh, shh,” she said, hugging him despite his spasms. “It wasn’t real. Whatever they showed you, it was fantasy. Push back, remember? Push back.”

Reggie held on to him for a while until Aaron finally seemed calmer. His breathing became more even as his mind fought for control of itself.

“It’s all starting again, Reg, isn’t it?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she replied.

“Are you scared?”

Reggie just nodded.

“Me, too.”

At last Aaron fell into a fitful sleep, and Reggie left the room. She left the stereo blasting, however; he seemed more relaxed when the noise could drown out his thoughts.

Having escaped the media circus outside, Reggie took out her phone to check the time and saw that there were three missed calls—and that she was a half-hour late getting home. Dad had told her at least fifteen times that they’d be leaving at 9:30 to go for the family therapy session, and it was now just after ten. She pressed the voicemail button with dread.

“Reggie, we’re leaving here in ten minutes. Where are you?”

“Regina Halloway, you better be walking through that door in one minute. Call me back now.”

“Damn it, Reggie! I asked one thing of you! How could you let Henry down like this? You and I are having a serious talk when I get back.”

Reggie’s stomach churned with guilt as she pressed the speed dial for her house. The phone rang four times before the answering machine picked up.

“Shit,” she muttered, quickening her pace. They’d gone. Her only chance was to catch the next bus that ran out to Thornwood Hospital; she wouldn’t be on time for the session, but she figured this was a better-late-than-never scenario.

Reggie ran the last block, and she was damp with sweat by the time she reached her driveway. Dad’s truck wasn’t there. She pulled out her house keys, and only then noticed the long, skinny white box tied with red ribbon sitting on her front stoop.

Reggie glanced behind her, but no one was around. She looked at the card on the box. “Regina Halloway” it read, in crimson, florid script. With a shaking hand, she picked it up and carried it into the house.

Reggie set the box on the kitchen table and stared at it for a few minutes, half-expecting it to explode. Finally, she undid the ribbon and opened it.

She screamed and pushed the box away. It teetered on the edge of the table and fell, scattering the dainty pink and white flowers that were inside it across the floor. The flowers were covered in a sticky red liquid.

Bleeding Hearts.

Reggie stared down in horror at the monstrous bouquet. The red substance pooled in the grout between the floor tiles. Was it really blood? She didn’t want to know.

She fetched a roll of paper towels and cleanser and started mopping up the mess, trying to control her gag reflex. Covering her hand in paper towels, she gingerly lifted the spattered flowers by the stems and carried them to the garbage can; as she did so, a sticky piece of paper fluttered to the ground. Reggie bent down and picked it up.

It was a movie ticket from the Charleston Theater, a place that showed old movies for cheap.

“The Way We Were, 11:30 am, Saturday, June 13,” it read. About an hour from now. Written on the back in the same red script that was on the bouquet’s card was the note, “Be there, or I’ll break your heart.”

Reggie felt sick. Flowers and a movie. There was a time when she would have given anything to attract such attention from Quinn Waters. And he knew it.

She gazed at the ticket as she weighed her options. “Rock” and “hard place” came to mind.

If she ignored Quinn’s summons she still might be able to make at least part of the therapy session. It would make Dad happy, or at least less mad, and, more importantly, Henry needed her right now. But Quinn had threatened her family, and she knew to take him seriously. If she didn’t show, who knew what he might do?

Reggie spoke quietly to herself as she continued to wipe up the gunk on the floor.

“I need to take him out of the equation,” she murmured. “It’s the only way to protect my family. And there are only two ways I know of to do that. Destroy the Vour and save the real Quinn, or…”

Her voice trailed off as her mind finished the sentence.

Kill him.

“Don’t be stupid—you can’t kill him,” she told herself. “There’s a real human being locked away in there somewhere.”

But another part of her brain, one that sounded a lot like Eben, answered back.

“But you’ve seen what can happen to a human after coming back from the fearscape. Look at Henry. Look at what he almost did yesterday. Will he ever really recover? Will he ever live a normal life?”

The unanswerable questions poured forth.

What if the Vour wasn’t really destroyed?

What if it still existed inside him somewhere?

What if, next time, he took a life?

Even if the monster was dead, what if this was where serial killers came from? Murderers, rapists, all the psychos Aaron read about and studied—what if there were others brought back from the fearscape like Henry, who could never forget the horrors they’d witnessed there? Who coped with the pain of remembering by making others suffer?

What if rescuing a soul from the fearscape was just dooming it to a different kind of hell in the real world? And dooming other innocent victims to those psychotic crimes?

Reggie’s heart reeled, and she could feel the tears welling.

But he’s my brother, she thought. I had to save him.

But that was just it. Henry was her brother. Quinn was not.

Maybe she had never even known the real Quinn. Maybe he’d been Vourized for so long he couldn’t be brought back. And even if he could, what if he was still a monster, having lived in hell for so long?

There were too many maybes, too many what-ifs.

Reggie forced herself to look at facts, and stripping away all uncertainties, there were two:

1. If she didn’t help him, Quinn would hurt those she loved most.

2. There was no way she was ever going to help that son of a bitch.

That left one thing for her to do.