Page 4 of Hell Bent

Alex knew the excuses; she’d made them herself. My mom is in the hospital. My check is late. My car needs a new transmission and I can’t pay you if I can’t get to work. It didn’t really matter if they were true or not.

She squatted down. “I feel for you. I really do. But I have my job, you have yours. Twelve thousand dollars by next Friday or he’ll make me come back and turn you into an example for every dime bag hump in the neighborhood. And I don’t want to do that.”

She really didn’t.

Oddman seemed to believe her. “He … got something on you?”

“Enough to bring me here tonight and to bring me back again.” Alex’s temples gave a sudden throb, and the oversweet tang of apple candy burst into her mouth. “Shit, man. You look bad.”

It took Alex a second to realize she was the one speaking—with someone else’s voice.

Oddman’s eyes widened. “Derrik?”

“Yeah!” That wasn’t her voice, wasn’t her laugh.

Oddman reached out to touch her shoulder, something between wonder and fear making his hand shake. “You … I went to your wake.”

Alex stood, nearly losing her footing. She caught a glimpse of herself in the reflection from the broken TV, but the person looking back at her wasn’t a scrawny girl in a tank top and jeans. It was a boy in a beanie and a parka.

She shoved the Gray out of her. For a moment, they stared at each other—Derrik, apparently. She didn’t know what had killed him and she didn’t want to know. He’d somehow pushed to the forefront of her consciousness, taken over her face, her voice. And she wanted none of that.

“Bela Lugosi’s dead,” she snarled at him. They’d become her favorite death words over the summer. He vanished.

Oddman had pressed himself against the wall as if he could disappear into it. His eyes were full of tears. “What the fuck is happening?”

“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “Just get the money and all this goes away.”

Alex only wished she had it that easy.

Rete Mirabile

Provenance: Galway, Ireland; 18th century

Donor: Book and Snake, 1962

The “wonderful net” was procured by the Lettermen c. 1922. Specific date of origin and maker are unknown, but oral histories suggest it was created through Celtic song magic or possibly seidh (see the Norse sea giantess Rán). Analysis indicates the net itself is ordinary cotton, braided with human tendon. After a loved one had been lost at sea, the net could be thrown into the ocean while attached to a stake on shore. The next morning, the body would be returned, which some found comforting and others distressing, given the possible state of remains.

Gifted by Book and Snake when their attempts to recall specific corpses failed.

— from the Lethe Armory Catalogue as revised and edited by Pamela Dawes, Oculus

Why is it the boys at Book and Snake don’t seem to be able to cook up anything that works the way it should? First they resurrect a bunch of sailors who can only speak Irish. Next they empty their not insubstantial coffers to get their hands on an authenticated letter from the Egyptian Middle Kingdom before Wolf’s Head can drum up the cash. A letter for the resurrection of a king. But who do they get when they light that thing up in their tomb? Not Amenhotep or good ol’ Tutankhamun, not even a headless Charles I at their door, but Elvis Presley—tired, bloated, and hungry for a peanut butter and banana sandwich. They had a hell of a time getting him back to Memphis with no one the wiser.

—Lethe Days Diary of Dez Carghill (Branford College ’62)

2

The walk back to campus was long, and the heat felt like an animal dogging her steps, its breath moist against the nape of her neck. But Alex didn’t slow her pace. She wanted distance between herself and that Gray. What had happened back there? And how was she supposed to keep it from happening again? Sweat trickled down her back. She wished she’d worn shorts, but it didn’t feel right to wear cutoffs to a beatdown.

She paralleled the canal trail, counting down her long strides, trying to get her head straight before she was back on campus. She’d walked part of that trail last year, with Mercy, to see the leaves turn, a flood of red and gold, fireworks captured in their fullest bloom. She’d thought how different it was from the LA River with its concrete banks, and she’d remembered how she had floated in those dirty waters, flush with Hellie’s strength, wishing they could both drift out to the open sea, become their own island. She’d wondered where Hellie was buried and hoped it was someplace beautiful, someplace nothing like that sad, scraping-along river, that collapsed vein.

The canal trail would be green now, choked with summer growth, but Grays loved it and Alex didn’t want to be anywhere near them just this minute, so she stuck to the dull parking lots and faceless office buildings of Science Park, hurried past the industrial lofts, and on to Prospect. Only Darlington’s ghost chased her here. His voice telling stories of the Winchester family and how their descendants had mixed and married with the Yale elite, or the hulking mass of Sarah Winchester’s grave across town—an eight-foot lump of rough-hewn rock, a cross pressed into it like a child’s school project. Alex wondered if Mrs. Winchester had chosen to be buried at Evergreen instead of Grove Street because she knew she wouldn’t rest easy right down the road from the factory where her husband had produced barrel after barrel, gun after gun.

Alex didn’t slow down until she’d passed the new colleges and crossed Trumbull. It was comforting to be back near campus where the trees grew over the streets in shady canopies. How had she become someone who felt more at home here than on the streets outside the Taurus? Comfort was the drug she hadn’t understood until it was too late and she was hooked on cups of tea and book-lined shelves, nights uninterrupted by the wail of sirens and the ceaseless churning of helicopters overhead. Her Tom Brady glamour had shaken loose completely when she’d let the Gray enter her, so at least she didn’t need to worry about causing a stir on campus.

Students were out enjoying the warm night, waddling along with couches jammed between them, handing out flyers for parties. A girl on roller skates coasted down the middle of the street, fearless, in a bikini top and tiny shorts, her skin gleaming against the blue night. This was their dream time, the magical early days of fall semester, the happy haze of meeting once again, old friendships rekindling in firefly sparks before the real work of the year began. Alex wanted to wallow in it too, to remember that she was safe, she was okay. But there wasn’t time.

The Hutch was only a few blocks away, and she stopped to try to get her head together, leaning against the low wall in front of Sterling Library. How had that Gray overtaken her? She knew her connection to the dead had been deepened by what she’d had to do in her fight with Belbalm. She’d called them to her and offered them her name. They’d answered. They’d saved her. And of course rescue had come at a price. All her life, she’d been able to see Grays; now she could hear them too. They were that much closer, that much harder to ignore.