TRIGGER WARNING! This book contains strong adult themes, including adult language, drug and alcohol references, sexual themes, violence, and scenes of child abuse. Future episodes will contain graphic depictions of child abduction, violence towards children and adults, graphic gore violence and explicit sexual content. I am not kidding. This book should probably not be read by anyone.
Bear with me, folks. Once I get Ana back in her hometown, we'll see a lot more of Freddy & Friends, but they don't make an appearance in this chapter. Hope you still enjoy it!
Five Nights At Freddy's is the creation of Scott Cawthon. The characters of Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, Foxy, Mangle, Toy Freddy, Toy Bonnie, Toy Chica, Mike Schmidt, Jeremy Fitzgerald, Fredbear, Springtrap, Plushtrap, the Puppet, Balloon Boy, and the Purple Guy, as well as Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria, belong to him. Everything else is a product of my own imagination and no similarity to actual events, locations, or people is intended or should be inferred. Do not reproduce, repost or copy any part of this story without my permission.
As always, a sincere thank you to all those who took the time to rate and review if you liked it (or even if you didn't like it). If you are interested in my non-fanfiction work, feel free to check out my blog (the address keeps disappearing when I type it here. It's rleesmith dot wordpress dot com) or look me up on Amazon.
CHAPTER THREE
If asked, Ana would have been willing to swear on the Necronomicon that she did not allow the situation waiting for her in Mammon to influence her work habits, but the facts did not bear her out. Work on the house, which had followed the same broad schedule as every other house she had flipped for Rider, overnight became a nightmare and she had no one to blame but herself. Following Rider's 'pizza party', she seldom saw the boys at all and whenever circumstances did throw them together, they were all on their very best behavior. Hal and Malcolm made a point of leaving the driveway open for her, and once, they even brought doughnuts.
Despite what should have been a relaxed and productive environment, Ana's work suffered. Every night, she was forced to stay later and later in order to keep a schedule that had never been a problem before. And most mornings, she found herself redoing the previous night's mistakes before she could even start, which inevitably led to her staying later. Once the cook was over and the boys were out, she moved herself in, in the hopes that having no escape from her responsibilities would force her to confront them. It was a tactic that had worked in the past, but although she was able to finish the house on time, the work itself was not up to her standards. Rider said it was fine and even paid her extra for what he called the custom details in the workshop, but Ana swallowed her pride and took it, even though she'd made a piss-miserable mess of those cabinets and they both knew it.
She spent one night back at the duplex, cleaning and packing. The next morning, she rented a U-Haul trailer, loaded it and the truck with everything that would fit, put the rest out on the curb, brought the landlord over for her check-out walkthrough (he took one look at the stack of signed and dated photographs of their check-in walkthrough, and in his piggish eyes, Ana could see her security deposit flying on angel's wings out of his pocket; he contested nothing, but he was not in a good mood), sat on the floor in the empty closet off the bedroom with her day pack on her lap and smoked a joint, then got up and left.
She drove only two hours that first day, straight to Rider's house. He and she pissed the remains of the day away together, smoking way too much and watching horror movies that seemed to get sillier until they were both lying on the floor and hugging each other, tears of laughter streaming down their faces while severed heads went flying on his big-screen TV. Then Rider became convinced yet again that he could run across the swimming pool if he could just go fast enough, so they went out to give it a go, tossing in every inflatable what-the-fuck he had first, because physics were still a thing and Jesus Christ, he was not. Thor, maybe. Not the JC.
After she pulled him out of the pool, they lay together on the stones, looking at the stars while, in the house, his girl-for-now-but-not-too-much-longer-if-she-didn't-calm-the-fuck-down slammed doors and flicked lights angrily on and off.
"You coming back?" Rider asked suddenly, when Ana was almost sleeping, her eyes open but insignificant.
"Don't I always?"
"This feels different."
"It always feels different," said Ana, closing her eyes so she could see the stars better. "I always think this is the one and I always end up back in your stable."
"You want out? I'll let you out."
"Never happen."
"Save that cradle-to-da-grave shit for Hollywood," Rider said. "If I say I'll let you out, I'll let you right the fuck out. You've served your time. S'not like you're gonna turn around and become a cop or some shit. You'd be happy with a little…like, a little coffee shop or something. Little glass counter with muffins and cookies and shit. Have, like, a couple racks of used books and some comfy chairs and couches, and play that alternative crap on the radio all day while kids sit around texting about social justice and checking each other's privilege."
Ana snickered. "Stoned-you is a closet hipster. I love it."
"Fuck you," Rider said comfortably. "I look great in a fucking fedora."
"But it'll never happen, Rider. I don't mean you'll never let it happen. I mean it never will." She gave it some serious thought and said, "I think I was supposed to die when I was a kid."
"Check that depressing shit now, darlin'. I'm at cruising altitude and I want to stay there."
"No, I mean it. I think I was supposed to, like in that dumbshit movie we just saw. I think it was all planned out. In Mammon, I mean. Only I got away. Mom got me away. Of all people, right?" she interjected and snorted. "She tried to take it back later, but she couldn't and that's why my life is all fucked up. I was never supposed to live this long."
"Horseshit."
"No," she insisted, warming to the idea now. "You know, it's like those old myths you read about. There's these three ladies who weave the universe and every single person's life is one thread. They weave them all together, these ladies. One spins, one measures and one cuts. I was spun, you know? I was measured and woven in, and then I was supposed to be cut, but I wasn't. My thread is just…just sticking out, getting more and more tangled up the longer it gets, because it doesn't fit anywhere. I fucked up the universe, Rider. The whole universe. I should have died."
"Never pegged you for a fatalist."
"It's all fatal," she said, opening her eyes to see the stars staring down at her with their thousand, thousand blame-filled eyes. "Nobody gets out of this game alive. Right or wrong, guilty or innocent, young or old, everybody dies."
"Not fatality, fatalism. You're talking about Fate. Capital F. Like, predestination and shit."
"I am?"
"You just said you were supposed to die. And because you didn't, the grand tapestry of the universe got all snarled up. Right?"
"Right."
"So that means you think there's some big plan and it's all already worked out. Every thread woven in, you said. Every life going back to the beginning and every life going on to the very end, all measured and cut according to its color, to make the picture the universe designed. This is what you believe?"
"I guess so?"
"Well, see, there's a paradox in that, darlin'. If Fate exists and predestination is a thing, then everything that happens was meant to happen the way it happened. So if you're alive, then by definition, you're supposed to be alive, no matter how random it seems to your puny mortal eyes. Because it ain't just your thread, even if it is all snarled up. Universe had to make your momma do what she did. Universe made you show up soaking wet in your socks on my doorstep. Universe made you come here tonight so you could move on tomorrow. There ain't no holes in the tapestry," he said, lifting one hand to point at the sky, where he surely saw the proof written out in runes only he could read. "Universe got you out of Mammon for a reason. Universe is sending you back."
Ana propped herself up on her elbows, but getting that much closer didn't show her anything new in the night sky. "You think so?"
"Me? Naw, I don't believe in that stuff. This life is all there is and when we die, we rot in the ground. There ain't no Fate and there ain't no one watching to see how bad we fuck up or to care when we die. We are on a spinning rock running circles around a burning ball of gas, pulling us through space at millions of miles an hour. Them stars you think is guiding your life are just more pockets of nuclear fusion of decreasing stability in a vast vacuum, no more aware of you than you're aware of the billions of microscopic bugs feeding on the shit in your intestines right now. Less aware, even, because them bugs are at least feeding on you and those stars don't have dick to do with us or with each other. Hell, half of them have probably burned out by now and it's just their ghost-lights we're seeing. There could be a billion other planets out there with life on it, a billion other guys like you, looking up and wondering, but we're all alone together in a universe that's constantly expanding, just getting further and further and further apart. And you know what?"
"What?"
He turned his head on the poolside tiles and she turned hers, so that they were looking at each other from inches away, upside down, each of them whizzing through space at a million miles an hour, but still somehow able to touch.
"It's all right," he said.
Ana looked back at the stars for a minute or an hour and then sat up. There was more that came after that—a blur of color and sound and familiar pain, smoking a little and drinking way too much and eating plate after greasy plate of bacon-fries—but for the moment, she was sitting up and looking down, seeing stars above her and stars below, their light reflected in the pool, and feeling herself surrounded on every side by an infinite cosmos that neither knew nor cared she was there. "Let's go," she said, and those were the last words she would ever remember of all the rest of that night, until she woke the next morning.
She woke, not because it was morning and the sun was stabbing directly into her head through her ear-holes, and not because she was on the kitchen table using a loaf of bread for a pillow and Rider's leather jacket for a blanket, but because she smelled coffee.
Raising her head did two things: Firstly, it showed her Rider, wearing nothing but his boxers, leaning up against the counter and rubbing his face as he waited for the coffee to make enough of itself to pour into the cup he held. The second thing raising her head did was to pull the muscles across her upper back, releasing pain like a banner unfurling from a tower window.
Her throat locked up against the scream that wanted out; her mother had been dead fifteen years now, but that old habit would not wear down. Gritting her teeth, Ana sucked in a breath and tried to look behind her, shifting the weight of Rider's jacket so that its collar pressed on her skin just below the nape of her neck and it was like the damn thing was made of knives.
"What the fuck?" Ana managed at last, but she knew. Oh, she knew.
Rider looked around at her, grunted, and took down another coffee cup. "Morning."
"What did I do?" Ana moaned, rolling her legs off the edge of the table and dropping onto her feet. She came out of Rider's jacket like a pistachio pulled from its shell, dry and dusty and a little green. She had no shirt on, just her bra. Her back from just under her neck to just over her shoulderblades was both burning and throbbing in a special way. New pain, but oh so familiar. "Why did you let me do it?"
"Let you, huh?" Rider tried to snort, coughed instead, and scratched his ass. "I ain't the boss of you, apparently. I ain't your daddy. I ain't…whoever the fuck you said I wasn't last night. Don't remember. Point is, I ain't him so I ain't stopping you. You can do what you want and you wanted a tattoo."
"What is it this time?" Ana asked, limping over to the shiny glass face of his double-oven and trying without success to get a good look. The glass was clean, but her reflection was distorted anyway, like trying to see herself in an oil-slick. She could only make out the pale blur of her back, monstrous and hunched, with a ribbon of bright pink arching from shoulder to shoulder, interrupted by spidery black lines. Just knowing what it was made the pain more tolerable, but amped up the irritation until it was as good as a headache. "God help you if you let me put angel wings on, you son of a…What is that?"
"You really don't remember." Shaking his head, Rider poured himself some coffee, then her, sliding the cup toward her like beer on a bar. "You ain't gonna want to hear this, but I told you so."
"I don't want to hear that," she snapped. "Is that words? Those are words! What does it say?"
"Possibilities abound, don't they? 'More parking in the rear.' 'Pull my hair, bitch.' 'Don't forget to sign the book.'" Rider sipped some coffee, watching her squint and contort in a futile effort to make sense of the calligraphy presenting itself backwards and dim in the surface of the oven's door. "It says, 'Everything is all right.'"
She stared at him. Her first thought, when she was capable of forming real thoughts again, was that she almost would have preferred, 'Pull my hair.'
Footsteps in the hall—bare feet on the hardwood.
Ana lunged for the table, snatching up Rider's jacket and yanking it on just as his girl came into the kitchen. She didn't care if Rider saw her bare back—he'd seen it before—but his replaceable piece of tail didn't need to know her business.
The other woman was dressed in the t-shirt Rider had been wearing last night, the message conveyed by its death's head and bloodied daggers somewhat lessened by the sight of her pink panties winking in and out of view with every step. She stopped short when she saw Ana, her cat-eyed expression of sleepy greeting turning in an instant to wide-awake outrage. "Who the hell is this?"
"Friend of mine," said Rider. "You met her yesterday, remember? Sugar, Ana? I don't keep creamer, because I got a dick, but there's milk." Leaning into the fridge, he uncapped the jug and had a cautious sniff. "Maybe not. Rumchata okay? I got plenty of that."
"I'm driving, Rider."
"What the hell is she doing here?" the girl demanded, hands on hips.
"Slept over. Seriously, Ana, one drop in your coffee ain't gonna kill you."
"It's called Rumchata for a reason, Rider. I don't drink and drive."
"Oh no, you do not stand there and ignore me! You did not bring your little whore-eyed ass-slut home and act like it don't matter!"
Ana looked at Rider, conflicted.
"Go ahead," he said, still investigating the refrigerator.
Ana looked back and gave the girl a smack to the mouth. Open-hand. Not too hard. She was a guest in his house, after all.
But the girl staggered back like she'd been shot, one hand covering her abused lips and the other pressed over her heart, eyes wide as saucers and full of disbelief. She sputtered a moment, then drew herself up and shrilled, "Are you going to let her get away with that?"
"Yes, I am."
"You…! You…!"
"Bitch," said Rider pleasantly, straightening and turning around to address her. "You do not tell me who I bring into my own house. If I want to fuck her right here in the sink in front of you, you still do not tell me who to fuck in my own house. You do not raise your voice to me in my own house over who I bring home. And last but not least, you do not insult my friends in my own house. Now get that bony ass over here and fry us up some eggs."
The girl huffed and puffed, but didn't throw a punch of her own and storm out. When her huffing and puffing failed to blow anything down, she walked, red-faced and tight-lipped, to the fridge and started making breakfast.
Rider made room for her at the stove, then turned the full force of his most charming smile on Ana. "Come with me into the den, darlin'. I got a going-away present for you."
Ana put her cup down, knowing damn well there'd be spit in it when she got back, but she wasn't going to drink it black anyway. She followed him from the kitchen and down the hall, listening to his girl mutter at their backs when she thought they wouldn't hear. Rider must have heard as well, but he didn't comment. Probably didn't think it was worth the breath to comment. Rider liked his women like he liked his food—the kind you take home and throw out when you're done.
Ana's day pack was waiting for her on the round table, but not alone. Beside it, still in its original box, was an old-school model Easy Bake oven.
Laughing hurt her back. She laughed anyway.
"Figured you were kidding about the uranium and the kangaroo," said Rider, going to the cabinet. He brought out another Easy Bake oven, one of the new ones, and held it up. "Also wasn't sure if you really wanted two of 'em, but I thought it was best to come prepared."
"Just the one'll do me," said Ana, grinning.
"Figured." He put the second oven back in the cabinet and closed it up, then came over to the table and unzipped her day pack with a complete lack of self-consciousness. "Come on over, darlin'."
She went, still smiling, but watchful as he opened the flaps on her pack and showed her its interior. Nestled among the spare set of clothes, non-perishable food, soap and shampoo and menstrual supplies, and all the other random crap she kept with her for those moments when she found herself away from home but still in need of stuff, were several new items. Pill bottles, the big ones, the kind vitamins came in, except that Ana didn't take vitamins.
Rider opened one and held it out. It was roughly a third-full of little pink pills, with a puffy pink strawberry sticker on the top of the cap. "Lexotan," he told her. "Six milligrams per. Stronger than you're used to, but I figured you'd have some rough edges that needed sanding down while you're out there. Not sure how long you'll be gone, so I hooked you up with ninety. You take no more than one of them no more than once a day," he added with a hard stare. "Got me?"
"Got you."
He put that bottle away and brought out another, much smaller. Ginseng, it said, but it wasn't. It had a puffy blueberry sticker on the cap. It was full of capsules, light on dark blue, unmarked. "Now, this is something new," he said, shaking one out. "My Addy connection broke a couple weeks back, so I am temporarily without inflow. Got this instead. I've tried it and it gets the job done, but it ain't quite the same thing, so do not be stupid around these things until you know how they're gonna hit you. You got thirty of them." He put the loner back in the bottle and put the bottle in her pack, knuckling through the others there in a dismissive way. "Vicodin, Xanax, Seconal, Oxy, Ritalin. Also, I know you didn't like the Salvia you tried that one time, so I got you a little E and a little 2CB."
"Holy shit, Rider."
"Yeah, yeah. I know, but it's the condom principle, ain't it? Better to have it and not need it than need it and have to buy it from some shady bastard behind the library only to get arrested by an undercover cop in the middle of Mormon country. Homework," he said, holding up a vitamin bottle marked with a puffy watermelon sticker. "I want you to try some of this. It's a little bit of this and that, polished off with just a hint of DPT. Fella who gave it to me called it the White Light. I like it, but you tell me what you think."
"Since when am I an expert?"
He shrugged. "Bottom's dropping out of the meth market. Turns out people like having teeth and skin. Hallucinogens are the new in-thing and these all come with my personal guarantee. Try some. You're going to see talking toasters and fuck a unicorn, but you won't wake up naked under an overpass eating some homeless dude's face."
"Catchy."
"Point is, I need an opinion from a source I can trust and neither the guy selling it nor the kids buying it are going to give me an honest answer when I ask if this is worth my investing. The fact that my girl might want to, I don't know, feel good for one fucking night while she's sweeping the ghosts out of the house she grew up in ain't but icing on the cake."
"Thanks, Rider," said Ana, touched.
"No problem. Pot," said Rider, all business once more. "You got a quarter-kilo of the usual here—" He lifted a large Ziploc bag full of weed and gave it a shake before putting it back. "—but for special occasions, you also got some Northern Lights," he told her, opening a Costco-sized bottle marked aspirin, and shaking out a joint, already rolled. He took a sniff like it was the cork pulled from a bottle of fine wine and put it away again, only to take out a nearly identical bottle, this one marked extra-strength aspirin. "And some Black Diamonds laced with my finest blend of zombie dust. You remember that night we went out to the desert with Bowser and Tyrone and you said that whole place used to be underwater and you could prove it because the sky was full of whales?"
"No," said Ana, raising an eyebrow.
Rider nodded. "Yeah, this would be why." He put the joint back in the bottle. "Fly responsibly. Put your keys up, play some nice music, enjoy the trip. Do not mix with people unless you know them really, really well, because you are a lot of fun on this shit, but you lose all the sense of self-preservation you got, and darlin', you ain't got it to spare."
He put the bottle in her pack and stood back, watching without embarrassment or even much interest as she took his place, pushing the many bottles within aside to get at the clothes underneath. She took his jacket off and put a shirt on, wincing just a little as the fabric scraped across her brand-new tattoo. When she zipped it up again and shouldered the canvas strap, he said, "This ain't a gift, by the way. But we'll settle up when you get back. You got enough money to pay these knee-breakers who got your mom's house?"
"My aunt's house," she corrected. "Yeah, I do."
"All right. You're making a huge mistake, but I'm gonna stand back and let you make it."
"Thanks, Rider, I appreciate that."
"I know you do. I know." Picking up the Easy Bake oven, he preceded her out of the room and then out of the house. "You gonna come in and have some breakfast or you just gonna hit the road?"
"Hit the road." Ana unlocked the truck for him and held on to the door while he put the oven in on the seat. She gave him her pack when he held out his hand for it and let him put that in, too. When he had nothing more to take, she lifted her chin, daring him to go in for a hug, or worse, a kiss.
He didn't. He looked at her for a long time, there in his driveway with his woman staring at them through the living room window and when he spoke, his first words were: "This ain't goodbye."
"No?"
"No. I said that enough to you to know how it feels. This ain't goodbye. Not sure what it is, but it ain't that. Call me when you get there."
Ana rolled her eyes and started to shut the door.
He put out a hand to stop it mid-swing, giving her shoulder (and by extension, her tender back) a jolt. His eyes were flat and hard, his jaw set. "We known each other a long time," he said quietly. A dangerous quiet. "I took you in when you had no one left in the whole wide world. I fed you. I kept you safe. You do me the goddamn courtesy of letting me know you at least got there alive. After that, I guess I ain't got nothing to say, but you let me know that much."
Ana frowned.
In the house, the girl paced out of sight to the kitchen and came back again, spatula in hand and raised like a sword.
"Fine," said Ana. "I'll send you a text or something when I get there. Jesus tap-dancing Christ! It's not like you'll never see me again."
He didn't answer, just looked at her. After a few seconds, his expression unchanged, he shut the truck's door. "Drive safe," he said and went back into the house.
The GPS in the truck said it was 576 miles from Rider's house to the offices of Beltran and Blake in Salt Lake City and promised her she could be there in eight hours. The truck's odometer told a different story at 642 miles and, between highway construction and city traffic, far from rolling into town at a quarter after four with time to spare before the office closed for the night, it was ten o'clock and full dark.
Ana found herself a hotel next to a Denny's and got a room. She had a shower first, a burger third, a joint second and fourth, and slept like a stone until her wake-up call rang through the next morning at nine. Several cups of coffee and a French Slam later, she was pulling into the parking lot of the complex Beltran and Blake shared with six lawyers, a bondsman, two CPAs and a real estate office. The receptionist manning the front room took one look and pointed her to the bondsman. When Ana checked the directory for herself and set off down the hall, she heard him muttering into the phone for a security guard.
Really. And she'd brushed her hair and everything.
There wasn't much going on in the tiny office, but it ground to an immediate halt when Ana pushed open the door and walked in—heavy workboots clumping on the carpet, keys jangling on the chain she kept clipped to her belt, her jeans distressed not by underpaid workers in some designer denim factory but by hard work and time, skull-faced Death reaping a harvest of souls on the front of her t-shirt, tattooed from her wrist to her shoulder, and her scuffed army surplus day pack under her arm. She couldn't possibly be the most badass thing that had ever walked through that door, but she guessed the folks running the sort of office that bought other people's debts and rooked them over got a little twitchy about appearances.
The three men and one woman whose day she had interrupted all watched her choose a desk and when she sat down, one of them put down the coffee pot, took out his phone, and came a little closer. Not all the way. Just a little. "Can I help you?" he asked.
"I'm Ana Stark," said Ana, resisting the temptation to add, 'And I'm here to kick your ass.' Shit like that was only funny until the cops got called. "I've come to settle Marion Blaylock's accounts."
"Oh?" The man took another step, keeping the desk between them. "And how have you decided to do that?"
When Ana unzipped her day pack, everyone in the room took one step back. She pretended not to see, moving her clothes and other junk aside (her 'vitamins' had already been moved to the front flap compartment) to pull out her shoebox. She dropped it on the desk, knocked off the lid and said, "Cash okay?"
Cash was fine, but it took a long time to work their way through the legalese and sign all the papers. In as much as she had let herself expect anything, she had expected this to go pretty much like a rental agreement. Pick up some papers, sign her name a dozen times, shake hands and walk out. She had a hell of a long drive ahead of her if she was going to be in Mammon tonight. Maybe if she'd sat in on one of Rider's acquisitions, she'd have been more prepared for the long slog that awaited her that day. A ream—not a stack or a file or a sheaf, but a fucking ream, as in, straight up the ass—of abatements, easements, encumbrances and assumptions, all needing initialing, dating, stamping and just so much signing. Some papers had to be read out loud before it could be signed. Others had to be copied and faxed and returned. Certain signatures had to be notarized. Every other line of every other paper had to be brought to her attention so that Beltran and Blake could not be held legally responsible if she failed to understand the full scope of the clause 'as is'.
It. Took. Hours.
During one of the interminable stretches waiting for the bank to receive, approve and fax back some papers, Ana finally got a look at the property, in the form of digital photos on the debt guy's phone (Yes, he had a name, and yes, she knew it, but she was never seeing this guy again after today and she saw no reason to get all first-name friendly with him). Her first impulse on seeing the pictures, stifled only by a lifetime of freezing up under intense emotion, was to leap up and punch this lying bastard in the face, because it was not her Aunt Easter's house, not at all. Aunt Easter's house had been big in relation to the dive where Ana and her mother had lived, but her aunt had worked at a pizza parlor, for crying out loud, there was no way she could have afforded a place like this. This was a mansion, something straight out of some old gothic ghost movie, with two chimneys like horns sprouting from the high mansard roofs and half-windows like eyes looking down from the attic. The exterior walls were sided in the same red rock that could be found all over the Utah deserts, but trimmed out in that unique gold-threaded black stone that had been mined to extinction in the quarry on which Mammon had been founded. The windows were leaded in Victorian patterns, all arches and diamonds. The columns spaced along the wraparound porch had Corinthian caps. She couldn't see the door through the curtains of ivy that had overgrown much of the north face of the house, but it surely wouldn't be just any old door.
And just like that, having not thought about Aunt Easter's front door in years, the dark fog that overlaid so many of her childhood memories blew violently away and she remembered it: a pair of heavy dungeon-like doors, heavily carved all over, with matching iron latches in the middle. Not knobs, but latches, curving over and around and back under again. She could all but see her little hand following those elaborate lines with her fingers.
Ana looked at the papers strewn over the surface of the desk, but the address was just a jumble of numbers without meaning. Had there been any other houses? Although she couldn't be certain, she had the vague sense that there weren't and the longer she thought about it, the more that sense solidified. There was nothing on Old Quarry Road but, well, the old quarry. The many winding lanes that cut into the mountainside might have had something to do with the mine once upon a time, reduced over a hundred years to mere bicycle or hiking trails. She could not recall ever coming across another person while exploring them with David, and certainly not another house. She thought she could remember riding in the backseat with David, going home after some night-time movie, seeing no lights at all in the dark woods that lined the twisting road until suddenly, there it was, the white globe lamp on the corner of the porch, shining through the trees like a second moon. Home.
She looked back at the phone and it was not that house. Then, as if the past and the present were two hands coming together in a painful, thunderous clap, it was.
"Are you all right?" the debt guy asked.
Ana nodded, tapping through the pictures in silence. That sagging porch with the broken stair was the same place she and David used to eat their lunches on sunny days. Those straggling trees, choked with thornbushes and fallen branches, were the woods out back where she and David used to camp in the summertime. The roof where Aunt Easter used to hang lights every Christmas season had fallen gutters and missing shingles, but it was the same roof. The grass in the front yard had all died and the weeds sprung up in its place were all that propped the surviving pickets of the once-white fence upright. The windows were filthy, the curtains all drawn and closed; the house that had been her golden castle was dark now, and still.
"There's no pictures of the inside," she said when she reached the end.
"No," the guy said after a noticeable pause. He was saved from having to say more by the fax machine and then it was back to the monotonous business of assuming the property, a process that numbed her to all other concerns so that she was actually on her way out of the office an hour later before she thought to ask again.
And again, he had to think about it and while he did, a short scene from a cheesy sci-fi comedy scrolled through Ana's mind: "What's with the cat?" "Oh, the cat. Yeah, well, there's a problem with the cat. Sign here." "What's the problem with the cat?" "It's your problem."
"We couldn't get a key," was the lame-ass answer he decided on.
"Or a locksmith?"
"Not while there was any question about our legal right to possess the property."
"But there's no question of my right, is there?"
He seemed surprised, as well he should be, after four hours and a ream of signatures. "None at all. You have assumed full ownership and all the legal rights and responsibilities thereof. It is one hundred percent your property."
"Then what's the problem with the cat?" Ana asked bluntly. "With the house, I mean?"
He looked at her while the other people in this tiny office pretended to work and then he said, "Your aunt…let things go."
"So you said and clearly, she did, but—"
"No, I'm not talking about what you can see. I mean on the inside. Listen, the first thing you're going to have to do when you get to Mammon is find the Abstract Title office and talk to them, but odds are good, they'll tell you you have ninety days to get the place up to code or vacate the property and let them condemn it. And having seen that house in person, I have to tell you, you're better off vacating. If they'll let you bulldoze the thing and start over from scratch, go for it, but don't hold your breath. There's a serious question of hazardous waste leakage already and demolition can only compound the problem. Either way, get ready to pay some hefty fines."
"Didn't I just take care of all that?"
"Oh no. No, you just paid the foreclosure settlement and assignment fees, which included the outstanding liens and damages the property had collected only up to the time of our office's involvement. Since ownership of the property has been in a state of legal limbo, things like property taxes and other fees have continued to accrue—"
"So you're telling me I just paid you forty-two thousand dollars for the privilege of buying debts I still have to pay?"
"No," he said. "You paid the debts outstanding at the time of our acquisition and purchased the assignment of your aunt's property. Now you have to assume the title and abstractions, which you must do at the Abstract Title office in Mammon, where you will have to pay the remaining taxes, liens and damages that have accrued since 2011. After you do that, they'll let you know what your further financial responsibilities are. You might want to have a lawyer with you when you talk to them, because I think I can guarantee they'll want the property vacated and the structure condemned."
"You are making me really sorry I talked my friend out of breaking your arms and sodomizing you," Ana remarked.
He blanched a little, but to his credit, he didn't back down. "Ma'am, all of this information was in the packet you and I have just gone over in detail. Would you like me to show you your signature accepting assignment of liabilities?"
The temptation to stroll over and take one of his business cards out of the holder on his desk and tuck it away in her pocket was strong, but Ana overcame it. She'd never see this guy again. Best to save her badassery for the ones like him in Mammon.
"Look, now that our obligations are met, let me lay it on the line for you," he was saying. "The zoning laws in that town are like nothing I have ever seen before. If you've got plans to chop up the property and throw down another dozen homes, forget it. If you're thinking to turn the place into some sort of hotel or ranch, forget it. The lot cannot be rezoned or divided. It can only be used as single-family residence from now until the end of time, and even if you could do any of that, that place is one tumbleweed away from a ghost town. The best possible thing you can do for yourself financially is clean up that property and then sell it to the next sucker who comes along, because you are never going to get your money out of it in any significant way."
"Is there anything else you'd like to share with me before I go?" she asked. "Is the back of the building burned off? Basement flooded? Tree through the kitchen wall? Shit, am I going to get down there and find squatters I got to evict?"
"No, nothing like that. I was amazed at how good the exterior was, considering how long it had been abandoned." He hesitated, visibly weighing the pros and cons of saying his next words aloud before apparently coming to the same conclusion she did; he was never going to see her again. "Local rumor has it, the place is haunted."
Ana stared, her frustration and anger fading into amusement against her will. "I remember there being monsters in the basement, but no ghosts."
"I'm just telling you what I heard. And it's obvious the teen set believes it, because there were only two broken windows and they both looked like storm damage to me. No graffiti, no fires, no trash. Just…the house itself." His brows knit. "To tell you the truth, I was surprised how adamant the city seemed to be about condemning the structure. Don't get me wrong—it needs a lot of work. If you decide to fix it up, if they even give you the option, there's no way in the world you would ever see more equity than you invested in the repairs. But I've dealt with a lot of condemned properties in a lot of cities and usually, they will bend over backwards to work with you because they don't want to do the clearing and cleaning either. These people…They don't want to touch it, but they don't want anyone else to touch it either."
"Because it's haunted, is that what you're saying?" Ana snorted, too irritated to laugh. "I think I'll be fine."
"I'm not saying that at all," he said. "But I have to tell you, I have been in dozens of houses that set the bar for bad investments. I've been in worse places as far as filth or neglect or damage or sheer perversity. Hell, I broke the lock on one foreclosure and walked in to find the previous owner hanging right in front of the door, six months dead, and he was neither the first nor the last corpse I've discovered. I've cleaned up bloodstains and puke and pentagrams. I don't spook easy…but there was something really wrong about your aunt's house. I never felt like I was alone there."
Ana headed for the door, shaking her head.
He followed her, but only as far as the reception area. Sometime over the course of this long day, it had started raining, so he stayed in the doorway as she walked herself out to the truck. She thought he might have something else to say to her, so she lingered a few seconds longer than necessary after tossing her day pack up onto the seat, giving him a chance to call her back. He never did. He just watched and the longer he did it, the more it began to remind her of the way Rider had looked at her before she left, like he was taking a mental Last Seen Photo.
She was never going to see him again. It made no difference how he let her go. If he wanted to stare her down through the glass or wave her goodbye or grab his crotch and flick his tongue through his V'd fingers, it was all the same to Ana.
Damn it.
Ana stalked back across the parking lot and stood on the other side of the glass, daring him to open the door.
He started to, stopped, reached again, stopped again, and finally Ana grabbed the door and yanked it open herself.
"What?" she demanded. "Spit it out!"
"Look, I don't believe in this stuff either," he retorted. "But there are laws about disclosure and in accordance with those laws, I have to tell you, your aunt is not the first person to disappear in that house. It has a history."
"Every house has a history."
"Not like this. Look…" He glanced back at the receptionist, who had been joined in the interim by a security guard, and moved out under the overhang with Ana. "When you get to Mammon, make sure you ask for a Chain of Title. You should know what you're getting into."
"I do know," Ana insisted. "I've been in that house before. I've slept there. The only ghost in that goddamn house is mine."
She turned and walked away through the rain. If he tried to wave her back again, she didn't look for it. If he called out, she didn't hear it. She climbed into the truck, slammed the door and peeled out without a backwards glance.
What time was it? Half-past three. Well, wasn't that the icing on the hellcake? It was still a three-hour drive at the very least from Salt Lake to Mammon and that was assuming no traffic and no weather. No way was she going to make it.
What did that mean for her, exactly? She wouldn't be able to pick up the title or the registration or whatever the fuck it was she needed tonight. Did that mean she couldn't stay there tonight? If the house was being condemned, it might not be safe for her to go inside and she was all right with that for now, but was it even legal for her to pitch a tent in the yard? Assuming she could find the tent. It wouldn't be the first time she'd slept in the cab of her pickup, but it sure wasn't very comfortable. All things considered, she'd be better off just getting a room at a hotel, but the thought of paying money for a strange bed when the house she fucking well owned was mere miles away just rubbed her wrong.
Well, no point fuming over it. Ana found a hotel with unlocked wifi and used it to find the Abstract Title office in Mammon. She called. As briefly as possible, she told them who she was, but before she could get very far into explaining her concerns, the lady on the other end of the line said, "Please hold," and blipped her off into dead space.
Ana shut off the truck's engine and settled in for a wait.
Eleven long silent minutes later, the phone clicked and a different woman said, "Miss Blaylock?"
"Stark," said Ana. "Marion Blaylock was my aunt."
"I see. Are you in town?"
"Not yet, but I'm on my way. I hope to get there tonight, but I'm not going to make it before five, so I was wondering—"
"I'll wait."
"Uh, lady, I'm still in Salt Lake. The way things are going, it might be eight o'clock or even later before—"
"I'll wait. Do you know the town at all?"
"I grew up there, but it was a long time ago."
The woman uttered a low, somewhat uncomfortable laugh. "Nothing's changed. Nothing ever does here. There's a place called Gallifrey's on the corner of Majestic and 12th St. It's a diner. You know the place I mean?"
"Yeah, it's in the same lot as the mall, right?"
The words had popped right out of her mouth before she even remembered there was a mall in Mammon, but now there it was, as clear in her mind as if she were looking at it right now. She still couldn't remember what it was called, but she could see the tall front windows hung with lights and all but smell the good mixed smells of pizza, burgers, cinnamon buns, hot pretzels and teriyaki chicken from the food court. A day's window-shopping at the mall was a good day for little Ana and the feather in that cap was always a brisk walk across the parking lot for sundaes at Gallifrey's, the three of them together—Ana and David and Aunt Easter—tucked into a corner booth and counting out quarters for the juke box…
"That's the one," the woman on the phone was saying as these thoughts dropped into the water of Ana's mind like blood and swirled away down the drain. "I'll wait at the office until six and if you don't show, I'll go to Gallifrey's and wait for you there. I understand you've been on the road a long time, but our business shouldn't take long."
"That's encouraging."
"No," said the woman with another of those laughs, even drier. "Please don't be encouraged by anything you think I have to say. I'll see you soon, Miss Blaylock."
"Stark," said Ana again, but she was already talking to the black.
The rain came and went over the next three hours in mild waves that alternated between pissy sprinkles and windy, waterless fits, but the clouds to the south steadily darkened and she knew, no matter what it might be doing elsewhere in the state, in Mammon, it was raining.
Over the years, whenever she had been pressed to mention where she'd grown up, after the usual jackassery about Mormons, someone would ask her how she'd liked living in the desert. It had always confused her. She did remember desert. At least, she remembered red rock canyons and great blasts of hardpan reaching out to the dark mountains on the horizon out past the quarry, but she also remembered rocky hills and towering trees, flurries of snow and torrential rains, the streets turned to rivers and the rivers to oceans. It was a wilderness that had dwarfed her memories of the town itself, so vast and so diverse that she had sometimes suspected she was remembering movie scenes and just superimposing herself and David onto them.
In high school, she would learn about microbiomes and how they formed and her odd memories would finally make a sort of sense. Mammon had been built in the rocky valley between the Salcombe Mountains and the Wasatch Range, with deep canyons breaking away north into the desert and climbing up into the forested hills to the south. Rain didn't make it through the geographical gauntlet very often, but if it did, it sure didn't leave until it had wrung out every last drop. The thunderstorms that followed the changing of the seasons were known to knock out power for days at a time and the snows could bury a car in a single night.
And here it was, late February. The end of winter, the beginning of spring. She couldn't have picked a worse time of year to come back, much less start an extensive renovation. The next time it started raining, it probably wouldn't stop for a week.
Just as this thought passed through Ana's mind, it started raining.
And it did not stop.
The clouds that had been following Ana south across the state thickened and blackened. Headlights came on, glittering like stars through the blinding rain, but it wasn't until she passed Parowan and got off the highway onto the treacherous two-lane road that was the only way in or out of Mammon that the weather really hit. Wind buffeted the truck, forcing Ana to slow and slow and slow again, creeping along with one eye on the road ahead and the other on the trailer behind her as traffic screamed past her. The first sparks of lightning might have been her imagination, headlights refracting off the wet windshield, but soon it was unmistakable, forking across the whole sky and stinking up every breath with ozone. Between the thunder and the rain, it was impossible to turn the music up loud enough to hear it, so she shut it off and drove to the sound of slapping wipers and tires—a unique sound that brought back dark memories all their own.
By the time she came over the Mammon Canyon bridge, the narrow river she remembered sparkling at the bottom like a little blue ribbon was in full thrash and halfway up the escarpment. On the other side, the first in a string of signs she had utterly forgotten these twenty years seemed to spring up and slap her with its familiarity: Mammon Welcomes You in gold script over an open scrapbook showing off scenes around town—sunset in the canyon, a mule deer nuzzling her speckled fawn, an exterior shot of the Historical Aircraft Museum, a child saluting the marchers in a Veteran's Day parade…and the last picture, which had been blacked out, perhaps by the same artist who had then sprayed the looming figure of a teddy bear in a top hat, red in tooth and claw, with the tag line Freddy Lives painted in dripping letters to look like blood.
A few moments later, she was passing the second sign, the one with the word FOOD in giant balloony letters, surrounded by snapshots of all the dining choices to be found in town, from romantic hotspots to family friendly scenes, and over all of them, her wings outstretched to hug the whole town, was the painted figure of a yellow bird in a white bib, her eyes like sockets in a skull and her beak open to show rows and rows of jagged, bloody teeth. Let's Eat! said the uneven letters painted across the bird's bib.
The third sign said FUN and captured the sort of generic entertainment to be had in any small town—children grinning up in wonder at fireworks, the obligatory fairground scene with teenaged girls posing with cotton candy fluffs as big as their heads, old men golfing, and a flock of fashionistas loaded down with shopping bags from the outlet mall that wasn't even in Mammon, but in Hurricane, sixteen miles further east. Noticeably larger than the others and conspicuously centered was the frame for another snapshot, but it had been painted over and from this blackness grew the hunched and fanged image of a demonic rabbit, a severed arm in each hand, poised to bite the head off the little girl in the fireworks photo.
The last sign in the series depicted what someone must have considered the best from every venue—whitewater kayaking, the lighting of the Christmas tree in front of city hall, horseback riding in the canyon, flowers in bloom, kids playing in the park—and over all, the silhouette of an enormous hook-handed figure with pointed ears, long muzzle, and just so many teeth. Come to play. Come to stay, said the sign. Forever, the spray paint added.
The graffiti wasn't new. She could remember seeing it, shivering at it, every time she and David biked back from the canyon. At the same time, the graffiti wasn't old. At least, the paint wasn't. It had been twenty years, but someone was still painting over the signs in the same way, maintaining the vandalism without improving on it with additional crudities or gore.
Ana mulled this over as she made her way downtown. The faithfulness with which Mammon's delinquents continued their defacements struck her less as vandalism than as a labor of love. Spray paint was a kid's weapon, and as rites of passage went, tagging up the welcome signs had an undeniable appeal, but she had trouble seeing kids keeping up the tradition with such relative restraint. The more she thought on it, the more she was reminded of that old movie trope—the old man leaving a single rose at the grave of his long-lost beloved twenty and thirty and forty years later.
But Freddy wasn't dead. Freddy lives.
It was well past six o'clock by now, but Ana followed her GPS to the title office anyway, as much to re-acquaint herself with the town as to see if the woman had left yet. The windows were dark and the door was locked, but the side trip wasn't wasted. Familiarity lay over every turn and intersection, more disorientating in its own way than a completely foreign town would have been. Some of the names on the buildings were different, but the streets themselves remained unchanged. There was the Pretty in Pink doll shop all the girls in school talked about and there, beside it, the model train and r/c car hobby store whose aisles little Ana used to wander with such longing. The video rental place had turned itself into a secondhand shop, but the bookstore was still stubbornly hanging on. The old two-screen movie theater was there, but although its marquee swore tickets were still available, the only posters hanging in the box office window were for Elizabeth Gaskell Elementary's Third Grade production of Hansel and Gretel.
And there, there was the school she used to go to, smaller than she remembered it, with newer playground equipment that nonetheless was well-weathered and in need of replacing. There was the bank and the streetlamp she used to stand under while she waited for David. And there was the street she used to live on, except…
It was gone. All gone. Not just her cul-de-sac, but the entire winding warren of them. Erased. In place of the small, shabby houses that used to be here was Primrose Park, with an expansive playground, a grassy lawn lined with beds of native flowers and shrubs, a jogging path sprinkled with benches to rest on or stationary stretching equipment for a little extra workout, even a pond where doubtless hungry ducks and geese begged for handouts on sunnier days than this one.
Ana drove into the parking lot and stared for some time, trying to find enough landmarks in the surrounding trees to determine where she used to live, but there was nothing left. Not of the neighborhood, not of the house, not of her.
And time was ticking away.
Ana turned herself around again and drove to Gallifrey's.
It was a small restaurant, squatting at the far end of the oceanic parking lot it shared with the mall, as well as a laundromat and appliance store she had failed to recall. The swooping 50s-style sign out front said, as it had done all the years of Ana's mostly forgotten childhood, GALLIFREY'S a classic "diner" with classic "food". As a child, she had found those quotation marks curious; now she found them quietly hilarious.
The few parking spaces adjoining the diner were not arranged with U-Haul trailers in mind, so she ended up parking over in the nosebleed section of the mall (appropriately named the Mammon Mall, she saw). The one box of clothes she could get at without unpacking the entire truck held some winter clothes and with a little effort, she was able to find a relatively plain hoodie, just the Bacardi bat and the message Get Some, nothing too demonic or suggestive. No sense freaking out the natives until after she'd worked out this whole title mess.
Splashing across the parking lot with the hood pulled low, Ana narrowly avoided getting run over by a nice Mormon family ("Bless you!" yelled Dad and they all laughed) and ducked into the diner. The smell of hot food and wet hair hit her immediately, followed by the facepunch of 50s nostalgia. Red and white check tiles, shiny chrome trimmings, and neon lights were everywhere, dotted by pennants and pictures of Elvis and muscle cars. The juke box was gone, although there was a picture of it beside the DVD rental box that had usurped its place. The wall behind the cashier's station was a shrine, dedicated to the memories of founders Betty and Joe-Bob Gallifrey, whose family still ran the place, and over the counter, Ana could see one of them now—Tiny Tim Gallifrey, the hulking six-foot, three-hundred pound slab of man who cooked everything from hashbrowns and pancakes to chopsteak and gravy. And there was his wife, Lucy, a bit more heavyset than Ana recalled, slapping together a chocolate sundae with the same air of harried cheer Ana halfway remembered. The teenager rushing between the tables was unknown to her, but had the Gallifrey look about her.
Ana scanned the tables as she shook off the worst of the weather and stopped when she reached a woman sitting alone at a corner booth—solidly built, modestly attired and middle-aged, typing away on a laptop with a sheaf of papers spread out before her. Ana had only the vaguest notion of what a person who worked in an Abstract Title office did, but she knew she was looking at one. When their eyes met, they both inclined their heads in 'Are you waiting for me?' nods.
The woman got up and came over as far as the podium. Up close, she aged another thirty years. "Miss Blaylock?"
"Stark," said Ana, for the third fucking time. "I'm Ana Stark. My aunt is Marion Blaylock."
"Right. Sorry. Well, I'm Wendy Rutter. You can call me…call me Mrs. Rutter. Please, come and sit."
"You said over the phone this wouldn't take long," said Ana, sliding over the worn seat. "I sure hope you meant it, because this has been a hell of a long day. A heck, rather," she amended with some consternation, spying the woman's Choose the Right shield-shaped pin. Utah. Had to remember she was back in Utah. "A heck of a long day."
The other woman picked up her papers and shuffled them around, then looked at Ana. Her lips—over-painted to give the impression she had them—pursed. She said, "First things first. What is it you intend to do with the property?"
"A lot depends on how I feel after I go there, but considering what I've had to pay out for it already, my intention as of this second is to fix it up and try to sell it."
"You don't intend to take over residence?"
"I intend to live there while I'm fixing it up, sure. But, and no offense or anything, but I don't have a lot of good memories of this place. I never planned to come back and I can't imagine staying one day longer than I have to."
"It's not a lifestyle that appeals to everyone," Mrs. Rutter said, making it obvious through her non-committal tone that she very much took offense. "We're a small community and quite close-knit. Strangers often have a difficult time adjusting."
"I'm not exactly a stranger, you know. I was born here."
"Yes, I'm aware. So." Picking a few papers out of her stack and slipping them into a file folder with the words Mammon Abstract Title and Assignments printed on the front, the older woman asked, "What were you told about the condition of the property?"
"I was shown a couple pictures. Property itself looks a little rough, but it shouldn't take too much sweat to get it under control. I'm told the house is a different story. Is this my notice to vacate pending condemnation?" she asked politely as she accepted the file folder she was passed.
"No," Mrs. Rutter replied, just as politely. "By law, we're required to give you ninety days before we can proceed in that direction."
"But that is the direction you're proceeding?"
"We intend to, yes."
"Any particular reason beyond the obvious?"
"The obvious?"
"The condition of the house," said Ana in her best, 'You got a problem with me or my family, come out and say it,' voice.
"The condition, the location." The other woman shrugged with her hands and her eyebrows, then signaled the nearest server. "The history."
"That's twice today I've heard that word. Was there an axe murder in that house I'm somehow unaware of?"
"I don't know anything about that. I only know that house is a bad place, Miss Blaylock, and it needs to be destroyed."
"Stark," said Ana. "Are you doing that deliberately or what? It's Ana Stark."
"I'm sorry. You just…" Mrs. Rutter's professional veneer cracked a little around the eyes. "You look so much like her."
Ana glanced at the window, as good as a mirror now that the sun was down. Her reflection was dark and colorless, but she didn't need it to know she didn't look a goddamn thing like Aunt Easter. Her aunt, like her mother, had been blonde with baby blue eyes, creamy skin, naturally rosy cheeks and lips—the works. And David had looked just like her, albeit with glasses and a jawline that promised to square out when he grew up…except he never had.
Ana's eyes were also blue, but not like her mother's or Easter's or even David's. No soft sexy baby-blue eyes for Ana; they were instead a sharp, startling pale shade of what might generously be called sky blue and which Rider had more accurately dubbed 'dog-eyes' blue. Add to that the dark curse of her hair, which still would not lie flat no matter how many products she dumped on it or how viciously she beat it with a brush, and she could not have looked less like Aunt Easter, even without the muscles or the tattoos or the myriad other environmental factors that chipped away at a person's genetic default settings.
"Did you even know her?" Ana asked, not in accusation, but just curious, because seriously, look so much like her?
The other woman laughed, a high, shrill sound that drew more than one frowning glance from other patrons of the diner. "Did I?" she asked and shook her head, still smiling. "I thought I did, once. I even thought we were friends, for a while. But she looked at me just the way you're looking at me now when I tried to tell her to sell the house and let us just…just bury it. And you won't either, will you?" She dropped her eyes, shook her head again, and started tapping her papers together and tucking them away. "I'd buy it from you myself if I could. I'd buy it from you just to burn it down."
The server's belated appearance stopped Ana before she could ask what the fuck that meant, and Mrs. Rutter took the check and got up from the booth.
"The city will be sending someone out in ninety days to inspect the property," she said. "By which time, if it is deemed unsafe for human habitation, it will be condemned and you will be asked to vacate at your own cost. Included in that packet are the outstanding liens and other penalties associated with the property. Those need to be paid in full within thirty days. I've included information on your legal rights and the number of a local property lawyer if you'd like to retain counsel. I've also included my business number and the number of the city commissioner's office if you have any further questions. I suppose I should say I'm very sorry for your loss, but your aunt fucked the devil himself and I hope she and her demonseed with her are both burning in hell."
And with that final word, as dispassionately delivered as the rest of her speech, the other woman walked out and left Ana staring open-mouthed after her.