Red Rain: Lightning Strikes: Red Rain Series #2 (6 page)

John looked at him for a few seconds, distrust written over his face just as if someone scribed the word with magic marker. “What are you going to do if I tell you?”

“Nothing,” Vondi said. “There’s just no way for us to start out on a solid foundation if I can’t even understand the most basic things about you.”

“In my dream,” John said, pausing for a moment. “I can’t save him because I don’t want to. I’d rather watch him drown.”

“
W
here are you
, John?” Father Charles’s voice came over the phone.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Harry said. “You’re losing your mind.”

John turned the key in his car’s ignition, starting it up. He pulled away from the curb, part of his mind rejoicing at the interruption.

“Just driving around,” John said to the priest.

“Where?”

“The highway,” he said as he drove past Kaitlin Rickiment’s apartment complex. He felt the gun sitting between his legs on the seat.

“Can you stop any of this, John?” Father Charles said.

The car came to a four-way. The road was empty and quiet this late at night. Harry was yapping, but John blocked him completely out. He listened to the silence coming across the phone and the echo it created in his head.

The question asked … nothing in his mind jumped to answer it one way or another. Perfect stillness wrapped around the tension that was the priest’s question.

“No,” he said finally. “It’s too far gone.”

“What are you planning to do?”

“What I always do,” John said.

“Will you come see me?” the priest said.

“Now?”

“Yes. I’ve … I’ve been derelict in my duties, perhaps. You can’t keep doing this, John. We have to find a way to get you help.”

Tears rushed to John’s eyes.

“I can’t believe this,” Harry said to his right, trying his best to crack through the wall John was building. “You’re tearing up because some holy man wants to help you? We’re minutes away from killing the girl, John. FUCKING MINUTES! Hang up the phone.”

John didn’t drive the car forward. He sat at the four-way, wondering if this was real—if a lifeline was finally being tossed. If God had heard his cries and was finally answering.

“You’re serious?” John said.

“Yes. Come to the church. I’ll meet you there.”

“Okay, Father,” he said, a swollen tear rolling down his cheek.

John hung up the phone and leaned his head back against the seat.

“You’re going to see him? Right now?” Harry said, his voice full of disgust and disbelief.

John kept his foot on the brake and didn’t say anything.

“Look, man. I get it. You’re feeling guilty. Part of you wants to stop. You’re not looking at the whole picture right now, though. You’re not going to get many chances like tonight, chances that I’ve lined up to take care of everyone at once. Her, here. Detective Dick Face alone at the office. We can end it all tonight, even easier than I thought. If you go to that priest, I don’t know that we’ll get another shot like this.”

John knew Harry spoke the truth.

Things had lined up almost perfectly tonight. The plan was simple. Kill Rickiment, making it look like a burglary. Head to the police station, and when Tremock decided to leave, finish him. No need to make it look like a mugging, because no one was ever going to find the body.

And yet, after so many years, Father Charles called. Tonight. Minutes before John walked up to the girl’s apartment and opened up holes in her body.

“That’s not a coincidence, Harry,” he said.

“You’re a goddamn fool. Get up there and do it. Go see the priest when it’s over.”

John put his hands on the steering wheel and drove forward. He hit the highway and rolled his windows down as he did.

The cool air chilled the car but also elated him.

For the first time in a long time, John felt there might be a way out of this. Father Charles could help.

* * *

D
ark bags hung
under Kaitlin’s eyes. Her boss had said something at work today, asking if she was feeling alright. Kaitlin said yes, she felt fine, though nothing could be further from the truth. She hadn’t slept in days. She stayed up all night, chain-smoking cigarettes and looking out this window. Every half hour or so, she leaned forward and peered through the blinds, trying to be as stealthy as possible.

She couldn’t call Eve over anymore. The girl spent the last two nights with Kaitlin, and at some point, Kaitlin had to face this on her own.

She watched a car roll slowly down the road, the driver not glancing up at her, but holding a phone to his ear.

Kaitlin didn’t even know what she was looking for anymore. Was she losing her mind? Not a rhetorical question. Perhaps she was going insane, night after night, unable to sleep or stop thinking someone was outside, watching her. Perhaps none of this was happening at all, but only her mind creating ghouls where none existed.

Perhaps.

She didn’t think so, though.

Someone was outside. Maybe not every night, but some nights, most certainly.

Kaitlin wanted to call the police, God she did, but they started all this. They came to her, asked her questions, and then left her here without even a life raft. Just floating in the ocean, sharks smelling her blood and swimming to her as fast as they could.

She stood up from her chair and put out the cigarette she held in an ashtray. She picked up a knife sitting next to the ashtray and then walked to her bedroom. She carried the knife everywhere she went now. She didn’t remember when she picked it up, but now if she was at work, it was in her pocket, and if she was using the restroom, it sat on the sink.

Kaitlin climbed into bed, not sure if she would be able to sleep.

Not sure of much.

* * *

F
ather Charles put
his collar on, looking at himself in the mirror.

His hands shook as he made sure it fit correctly. Had his hands ever shook like this when dressing? Not since he first left the seminary, speaking his first sermon at his first church. That was years ago, and when compared to now? Almost silly.

“What do You want me to do?” he said.

He knew God wasn’t going to answer him, though. He said it out of spite. Out of anger. He hated this position, powerless, yet forced to act.

Charles had to get out of his own head if he were to have any chance of helping. He needed to focus on that, on
helping
, instead of his anger at God. The anger would do nothing to solve this problem, leaving him waking up sweating and with heart palpitations.

“Guide me, Lord,” the priest said.

He didn’t know what to say when John arrived. He only knew he had to try.

* * *

T
he lights burned
from inside the cathedral. John watched them from the parking lot, both he and Harry silent.

Father Charles was in there and the only thing keeping John from getting out of the car was Harry. His dead friend remained silent, but John still felt his pull easily enough. Harry had been close to getting what he wanted tonight, and somehow John drove him here, the last place he wanted to be.

How was I able to do it?
John said.

“Because you’re a fool,” Harry said aloud. “You think this is going to stop something and it’s not. It’s going to make things worse, I promise. What do you think is going to happen when you go in there? That all of a sudden everything that’s made you from the time you were ten until now is going to disappear—that some holy light will shine down and clean you of all your impurities?” Harry looked over to him. “John, there is no stopping this. I don’t know why you are this way and I don’t care. The priest won’t fix you. God won’t fix you, if he even exists.”

“Shut up,” John said quietly, his eyes closed.

“Go on, then. Let’s get this over with.” Harry opened his door and led the way, not waiting for John to get out of his side.

He followed, though, looking down at the pavement instead of up at Harry. They both walked inside, Harry not waiting, but walking to a pew and sitting down, staring forward as angry as John had ever seen him.

“John?” Father Charles called from his office.

“Yes, Father, it’s me.”

John walked past Harry, down the aisle and toward the statue of Jesus dying for all sins—even those that John had committed. He looked to his right and saw the priest coming out from the hallway, dressed in black and wearing his collar as if it wasn’t the middle of the night, as if he was about to give a sermon.

“Thanks for coming,” Father Charles said. He joined John’s side, both looking up at the dead God they worshipped.

“How long have we known each other, Father?”

“How long ago did you first come here?”

John shook his head. That had been such a long time ago. It felt like a different person walked in here originally, looking for answers that he hadn’t been able to find anywhere else. “Maybe twenty-three?” he said.

“And your first had been by done then?”

John said nothing, knowing that anything outside the confessional booth could be used against him.

“What am I going to do?” John asked.

“Will you take the sacrament with me?”

“Of course,” John said.

* * *

J
ohn had been
twenty-three when he first walked through Charles Rapport’s cathedral doors. It took ten years from the point at which he watched Harry drown in the ocean until he realized that his life was, as the twelve-steppers would say, unmanageable.

When he arrived, he was close to suicide. The world was closing in on him, ready to suffocate him, and he saw no way to make everything stop. He couldn’t even slow it down.

He went in on a Saturday, hoping that the church would be empty, hoping that he might be able to pray. He had never done it before, not even by accident. His parents weren’t religious and that influenced John’s life as well. But, after what happened two weeks before, he didn’t see much choice. He would be in jail soon, and after that? Strapped to a chair just before electricity surged through his body, not stopping until he sat dead, his skin smoking.

The church had been empty and John felt relief as the door closed behind him. He didn’t know how he would explain himself if people started asking him questions; why was he here? Did he believe in God? Plus any other number of things that John couldn’t imagine.

He took a seat and looked up at the dimly lit platform in front of him. The place looked somewhat creepy, a suffering man hanging from a cross and shadows cast every which way.