Posters of old movies lined the walls, props and costumes were displayed in glass cases, and old screenplays were packed on to every bookshelf.
“I knew I recognised you!” Warrick cried. “You’re Virgil Abernathy! I used to watch your reruns all the time! I am such a huge fan! I wrote you a letter once and you sent me back an autographed picture! Warrick Wyman! You remember me?”
“I, uh, I think so,” said Virgil. “Maybe, yes. Warrick, good to finally meet you.” He smiled to the others. “Oh, I had a show, back in the seventies.”
“Not just any show,” said Warrick, “you had the best show. When Strikes the Shroud was the king of shows. This was even before The Night Stalker, wasn’t it?”
Virgil nodded, allowing a little pride to creep into his voice. “We started a year before Kolchak and ended the year after. In our final season, we were moved to the Friday night slot and that was a death sentence, so when we were cancelled nobody gave a damn. But there was a time when the show was pretty hot stuff. Come on into the kitchen.”
He led them in, and put a kettle on the stove.
“What the hell are you doing here, man?” Warrick asked.
“My daughter lives a few towns over,” Virgil said, taking down a half-dozen mugs. “Came here to be closer to her and her kids.”
Javier cleared his throat. “I, uh, I was on the show, too.”
Warrick slapped his own forehead. “Oh my God! Javier Santorum! Dude, you were, like, the best villain ever!”
“Well,” said Javier, chuckling, “I don’t know if I’d go that far, but I was a pretty good bad guy.”
“You had such a great voice,” said Warrick. “What was that thing you always said? ‘Fear is a choice no one makes, but—’”
“Fear is a choice no man makes, but all men must endure,” Javier corrected.
“That’s it!” Warrick cried. “That’s the one! This is amazing! This is wonderful! So did you fall in love on set, or what?”
Javier’s smile became puzzled. “Sorry?”
Virgil frowned. “Uh, Warrick, we’re not … an item.”
“You’re not?”
“I’m just helping Virgil solve the mystery,” Javier explained.
“What mystery is that?” Ronnie asked.
“You first,” said Virgil. “What brings you to town?”
“A kid is in trouble.”
“Who, this Cooke kid?” said Virgil. “But you’re not from here, so what do you care? It’s hardly any of your business.”
“Well,” said Warrick, “that’s the problem, isn’t it? It’s never anyone’s business, not if they can help it. So, while everyone looks the other way and makes excuses and ignores what’s going on right in front of them, innocent people are dying.”
“Again I ask, why are you taking an interest?”
“It’s what we do,” said Ronnie. “We help people.”
Virgil nodded, and smiled. “Good. That’s good.”
“Tell us about this mystery you’re working on.”
“Not just a mystery,” said Virgil. “A murder mystery. My neighbour got killed a few nights ago. I saw it happen. The killer’s a guy called Oscar Moreno, owns the hardware store on Appletree Street.”
Linda frowned. “It, uh, it’s not much of a mystery if you already know who the killer is.”
“Ah, but there’s the rub. It wasn’t Oscar Moreno who killed him. Well, it was, but he was also someone else. Taller. Thinner. Weird skin and a big mouth.”
Linda took out her phone, brought up the picture she’d taken of the Narrow Man drawing. “He look anything like this?”
Virgil put on his spectacles, and peered at the phone. “Yep,” he said. “That’s him. Well, roughly.”
“Let me see,” said Javier, shuffling in. “Who is he?”
“He’s called the Narrow Man,” Linda said. “Pretty much an urban myth until now.”
“It was no myth that killed my neighbour,” Virgil said. “It was a shapeshifter.” He held up a hand. “Now, before you dismiss me as a nutcase, hear me out. I have a computer, and Javier knows how to use it.”
“I took a course,” Javier explained.
“Last night,” said Virgil, “we were doing some research. It was that … that Narrow Man guy that did the killing, but as he was leaving the house he turned into Oscar Moreno.”
“Wearing my face,” said Javier. “An exact copy of my face.”
“That’s right,” said Virgil. “He changed his looks, his height, his weight … I think that’s all they can do, though.”
“That’s what the website said,” Javier nodded.
“Yeah,” said Virgil. “Shapeshifters can change their appearance, but only in a limited kind of way. I’m not talking about him turning into a panther or anything like that. This isn’t Manimal.”
Kelly frowned. “What’s Manimal?”
“It’s a show I was due to guest on that got cancelled before we filmed my episode,” Virgil explained as he made tea. “It was supposed to be the start of my comeback, but that’s fine, that’s the way it goes sometimes.”
“Why did he kill your neighbour?” Linda asked.
Virgil shrugged. “Robert Snyder was a thief. That’s not just my opinion: he’d been to jail for it. He probably stole something from Moreno, that’s what I think.”
“Or tried to,” said Linda, “and saw something he wasn’t supposed to.”
Virgil shrugged. “Maybe, yes.”
“Does he know you know?” Kelly asked.
“I don’t think I’d be alive today if he did.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” she said. “Why did he pick Javier’s face? Sounds like he wanted you to see.”
“He had no way of knowing I’d be looking out my window at that particular moment.”
“I don’t know, Virgil …”
“If he knows, he knows – so what? Nothing I can do about it. I’m not going to hide away in the town bunker. That’s not how I’m going to go out.”
“What do you know about Oscar Moreno?” Ronnie asked.
“Not a whole lot. I’ve passed his hardware store a thousand times, never been in. He lives on the other side of town, on Chester Road. We do have something in common, though – neither of us is from Desolation Hill originally. He married a widow after her husband died, moved into a house with a couple of kids and has pretty much been a stand-up guy about it all. Nobody we’ve spoken to had a single bad word to say about him.”
Ronnie nodded. “We’ve seen that before. Depraved killer establishes himself as a pillar of the community. It’s a common trait.”
Javier scowled. “You kids need a new line of work if these are the people you’re mixing with.”
“Every so often, we find someone worth the effort. Austin Cooke, for instance. We’re pretty sure the Narrow Man has him.”
Both Virgil and Javier froze.
“What … what’ll he do with him?” asked Javier.
Ronnie hesitated. “Eventually, he’ll kill him. We think. A kid goes missing around this time every year and they’re never seen again.”
“That’s true,” said Virgil. “Jesus, that’s all him? That’s all the work of one guy? I thought … I believed what the cops said. Accidents. Running away. All that crap. I believed them.”
“You couldn’t have known,” said Kelly.
“You said ‘eventually, he’ll kill him’,” Javier said. “What did you mean by ‘eventually’?”
“I mean we have no reason to believe that Austin is already dead,” said Ronnie. “In fact, we’re working on the basis that he’s alive.”
“So this is a rescue mission you’re on.”
“Yeah. Pretty much. And it’s been made a whole lot easier now that we know where to find the Narrow Man.”
“So what’re you going to do?” Virgil asked. “Storm the place, all guns blazing?”
“That’s rarely the smart move,” said Ronnie. “Austin’s safety is our first priority. If we
can find out where he is and get him out without causing a fuss, that’s our best option. Once he’s safe, we can go back for Oscar Moreno. Would you guys have any idea where Moreno would keep Austin?”
“None, sorry,” said Virgil. “Although I doubt he’d take him home, not with his family there. He has the hardware store, of course. I always use the one on Main Street. It’s bigger. Every time I pass his store, it looks dead.”
“So if he needed somewhere to hide a kid …”
Virgil shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know. But what if you go snooping around and he finds you? If he is a shapeshifter like I think he is, he’s going to be more than a handful. From what we’ve read, shapeshifters are pretty hard to kill.”
“We’ll find a way,” said Ronnie. “We always do.”
“Sometimes,” said Warrick, nodding.
THEY ATE THEIR MEALS, and a civilian came to take away the remains. He didn’t seem intimidated by Amber’s horns any more than Lucy had been, but unlike her he didn’t stop to chat.
Another three hours rolled slowly by, and they were well into the fourth when Lucy returned with Ortmann. They cuffed Amber and Milo and took them outside, into an SUV with three rows of seats and tinted windows. They were seated in the middle row. Lucy climbed in behind the wheel and Ortmann sat in the back, and they waited a few minutes until Chief Novak climbed in beside Lucy. Then they drove off for the mayor’s residence.
It was set away from the town proper, and occupied a generous expanse of woodland and meadow to the north, where a large river curled down from the hills and brought with it melting snow and ice. The house itself was a grand old colonial, wood-framed and broad and two storeys tall. They were met on the front steps by a man with a badly burned face, wearing a transparent plastic mask over his scars.
“Novak,” the burned man said in greeting. His eyes moved to Milo and then Amber, examining her horns without comment. When he was satisfied, he grunted and turned, led the way into the house through an ornately carved door. Novak followed immediately after, and then Amber and Milo. The other two cops were right behind them.
They passed a grand central staircase that swept up like angel wings to the second floor, then the burned man brought them through a set of double doors, into a drawing room with huge windows that looked out on to the sunset and the river that sliced through the hills. An old man stood by the window, his hands clasped behind his back. He had probably been waiting for them in this exact pose. He was, quite obviously, a dick.
The old man turned. He may have been tall once, but age had shrunk him. His white hair was sparse on top and unkempt around the ears, but the rest of him was neat and orderly. His suit was three-piece and he had a folded handkerchief in his top pocket. He wore small glasses.
“Mayor Jesper,” said Novak, walking up to him. Jesper did the politician’s handshake – shaking with one hand while grasping the elbow with the other.
“Chief,” said Jesper. “Good of you to come. Officer Thornton, Officer Ortmann, nice to see you again.”
“Mr Mayor,” Lucy said, while Ortmann nodded respectfully.
Novak stood aside, allowing Jesper a clear view of Amber and Milo.
“And these are our visitors,” the mayor said. “Mr Sebastian, you are a demon also, are you not?”
Milo didn’t say anything, and Jesper chuckled. “I’ll take that as a yes. So what do you say we dispense with the usual bullshit and skip straight to the question-and-answer section, eh? What did he offer you?”
Amber frowned. “What did who offer us?”
Jesper shook his head. “No, no, we are dispensing with all that, didn’t you hear? No ducking of the questions will be permitted.”
“I’m not ducking,” said Amber. “Who are you talking about?”
“This will go better for you if you cooperate,” Novak said.
“I’m trying to,” said Amber. “Listen to me – no one offered us anything. You seem to think we’re here for some specific reason, when really we’re just running as fast as we can from those men on the motorcycles.”
“The Hounds of Hell,” said Jesper.
He knew of them. Of course he did. “Yes,” said Amber.
“You’re running from them, you say? Are you sure you’re not working with them?”
She frowned. “What? No. Christ, no. Why would we be? I don’t understand any of this. What do you think we’re here for?”
“I know what you’re here for,” said Jesper. “You’re here to kill me.”
She stared at him. The only response that occurred to her was, “No, we’re not.”
“What did he offer you? Eh? What do you get if you kill me?”
“Seriously,” Amber said, “we’re not here to kill you. We hadn’t even heard of you until a few hours ago. We were told this town might be a safe place to hide from the Hounds. That’s the only reason we came.”
“You’re responsible for the barrier,” said Milo.
Jesper looked at him, and said nothing.
“It keeps the Hounds out,” Milo continued. “The Shining Demon, too, I’m guessing. You’re hiding from him, the same as we are.”
“Is that right?” Amber asked the old man. “Well, that’s great! It means we can work together!”
“I don’t need your help to keep them out,” said Jesper.
“But … but we’re on the same side!”
The burned man chuckled beneath his mask.
“I doubt that,” said Jesper. “The barrier keeps Astaroth and his representatives at bay, but he can still send through his little demons and killers to try to cut my throat.”
“He didn’t send us. I swear.”
Jesper peered at her. “What were the terms of your deal with him, to get like this?”
“I didn’t get this way because of a deal,” she said. “My parents, they bargained, but I was born this way.”
“Hmph. Interesting. Then what did you do to make him angry enough to send the Hounds?”
“I … I cheated him.”
A smile twitched at Jesper’s mouth. “I see.”
“We’re not your enemy. We can be allies if you’d just let us.”
Jesper turned, walked back to the window, his hands once again behind his back. “Why? What do you propose? In what way can you possibly bring any advantage to me? You have drawn the Hounds back to Desolation Hill. You have focused Astaroth’s gaze upon me again after all this time. We are not, and can never be, allies. Your presence here is unwelcome.”
“But … but nowhere else is safe.”
“Desolation Hill isn’t safe. Not for you.”
“So what are you going to do?” Amber asked. “Hand us over to the Hounds? You’d be sending us to our death.”
Jesper shook his head. “What they do with you is not my concern.”
“Bullshit,” said Amber. “Handing us over is the same as killing us.”
“I don’t involve myself in such matters,” Jesper said. “I leave that to Chief Novak and his fine police force.”
“Your Chief of Police has already murdered a man!” Amber said. “He shot him right in front of us!”
“Philip Daggett was a serial killer,” Novak said, sounding bored.
Jesper waved his hand. “I don’t involve myself in such matters,” he repeated. “My police take care of the unfortunate necessities. I focus on keeping this town running.”
“What did you do?” Milo asked, his voice quiet.
Jesper turned to him.
“You know why the Shining Demon is coming after us,” Milo continued, “but why is he coming after you? What did you do?”
“You really want to know, Mr Sebastian? Then answer my question. Are you a demon also?”
Milo didn’t say anything. But after a moment he shifted, and Jesper hurried closer, eyes wide.
“My, my … You’re not one of his, are you? Astaroth’s demons are red and beautiful, but you … You are night itself, and wonderful. Demoriel, am I right”
&nb
sp; Milo didn’t respond. Steam rose from his red eyes.
Jesper nodded, more to himself than anyone else. “Definitely the work of Demoriel. You have a car, yes?”
“We have it impounded,” said Novak. “Haven’t even gone through it yet.”
“I’d be careful when you do,” said Jesper. “Demoriel tends to make deals with people with horses or carriages or, these days, cars. These animals or vehicles are linked to his demons. I’d say Mr Sebastian’s car could certainly harbour a nasty surprise or two. The truly interesting thing is, I have read that Demoriel is very particular in choosing those to whom he grants power. What was it about you, Mr Sebastian, that he was drawn to?”
“That’s not what you asked,” said Amber. “You asked if he was a demon. He answered. Now it’s your turn.”
Jesper dragged his eyes away from Milo – reluctantly – and gazed at Amber for a few moments before chuckling again. “Very well, very well. I am a man of my word, after all. Officers, would you mind leaving us?”
Lucy and Ortmann hid their surprise well, and nodded and left. When they were gone, when it was just Amber and Milo standing there with Jesper and Novak and the burned man, Jesper continued.
“This land was not always American, did you know that? When I was born here, it was controlled by Russia. That was nearly three hundred years ago.”
Amber refused to be impressed by his age.
“Back then, things were tough,” Jesper said. “I’m sure you can imagine if you try hard enough. I was born into poverty and I spent my life clawing my way out of it. And, just when my fortunes were beginning to turn, I realised I had become an old man. My life was hardship and bitterness and it was almost over.”
“So you made a deal with the Shining Demon to prolong your life,” Amber interrupted, “and something went wrong along the way.”
Jesper smiled. “You don’t know nearly as much as you think you do, young lady. But yes, that was one of my goals. And so, a little over two hundred years ago, I summoned the Shining Demons.”
Amber frowned. “Plural?”
Jesper nodded. “Brothers, from what I was told. Astaroth and Naberius. They appeared before me and we negotiated. They agreed to provide me with power and success and one hundred more years of life, and they named their price.”