Lance raised his head to the gray light that filled the doorway like a mist. “By God, she’s going to talk now,” he said, and walked out of the room.
After placing the ax against the entry archway, he stepped out into the compressing heat and slammed the door behind him.
“Pick up the phone,” Lance murmured to himself as he began to speed up on the road heading south out of Stony Bay.
The phone in his hand emitted an unpleasant, monotonous buzz within its listening piece. There was a pause and then the sound began again. Lance almost pulled the phone away from his ear and terminated the call, but then he heard a click and an inward draw of breath before Andy’s voice resonated through the line.
“I didn’t expect a draft this soon.”
“Andy, listen to me. There’s some real bad shit going on at the house. I don’t have time to explain it all, but it was originally built by my grandfather,” Lance said, taking a curve faster than he had intended, the wheels of the Land Rover shrieking their protest beneath him.
“What? Your grandfather?”
“Yes, and that’s not all. I’m on my way to see my grandmother, she’s still alive. If you don’t hear from me—”
“You’ll be dead.”
A slithering ribbon of dread ran through Lance’s stomach. The voice that had cut him off wasn’t Andy’s. He felt his hand begin to shake as he pressed the phone tighter to his head.
“Andy?” His voice came out a whisper. A sound like a thick zipper being drawn open came from the earpiece, and Lance swallowed the hard ball that formed in his throat.
“You’ll be dead before you know it, boy. Just as well come back and get it over with.” His father’s voice sounded as if he were speaking through a mouthful of liquid. Maybe it’s the electronics, Lance thought numbly. Maybe it can’t recognize words from a dead voice box.
“You can’t hurt me,” Lance said, his voice weakened by the thought of how his father was even speaking through the phone.
“Look at your arm and tell me I can’t. We’re getting stronger every minute, boy.” Anthony paused and a sound like lips being smacked together filtered through the earpiece. Lance had a sudden horrible image of his father’s soul seeping out of the phone and into his own ear canal, poisoning and destroying the tissue as it passed. “Don’t tarry too long, we’ll be waiting.” The line crackled and then went deathly silent.
The sound of a horn blared and Lance blinked, his eyes focusing on the oncoming headlights of a large black pickup. His arms jerked the wheel, and he watched the world tilt as he swung away from the truck’s enormous silver grill, its left fender missing the rear end of the Land Rover by inches. The other driver blasted the horn again as the truck sailed past, his enraged eyes finding Lance’s for a split second.
Lance steadied himself, his breath bordering on hyperventilation as he focused on the road ahead and slowed well below fifty miles per hour. A tinny squawking drew his attention to the passenger seat, where he had dropped the phone. He picked it up, barely holding it with two fingers, as if it were a putrid piece of meat. As he brought it closer to his ear, he recognized the sound of Andy’s voice.
“Lance! Can you hear me? Lance!”
“I’m here. Did you hear that?”
“Hear what? You were saying something about your grandmother being alive and then you were gone. What the hell is going on?”
Lance slowed the SUV to a crawl and turned off the highway, past the sign reading Riverside Serenity, a home for caring.
“I can’t explain any more right now. If you don’t hear from me within the next few hours, call the police and send them to the house. Tell them to drag the waters just in front of my place. I gotta go.”