Intercepts: a horror novel Page 15

  He fumbled through one button at a time. He couldn’t get them undone fast enough. Hannah’s shirt fell from her shoulders revealing her slender body and olive skin. For the first time, Riley realized just how attractive Hannah truly was.

  Hannah unclasped her bra, letting it fall to the ground. Riley’s dad tenderly cupped her breasts as he bent down to kiss them. While his tongue gently roamed over her nipples, Hannah forcefully grabbed him by the hair. This seemed to incite them both with a sense of passion and urgency.

  He undid his belt and kicked off his pants. Hannah seated herself on the dining table. She lay down. Then, supporting herself with her feet and her shoulder blades, she arched her back, raising her waist off the table so she could slide off her pants. And then her black panties.

  He was shirtless by now. He climbed on top of her.

  The table shook. Hannah moaned as she rolled from side to side. Her moans became louder, more uncontrolled, until she shouted out an ecstatic, “Oh, god!”

  He held his hand to her lips. “Shhh. You’ll wake Riley,” he said.

  “Riley? What are you seeing?”

  The voice belonged to Hannah, but it was calm and clinical.

  Riley blinked…

  Her father was no longer in the room. No clothes on the floor. No one on top of the table. Everything was as it was. Hannah still sat to Riley’s side, her brow furrowed in concern and curiosity.

  “You were seeing something over there, weren’t you?” Hannah said.

  Riley nodded.

  “What was it?”

  “Did… did you have sex with my dad?”

  A look of shock flashed across Hannah’s face. “What?”

  “When I was a kid. Were you two having an affair?”

  Hannah blinked. Her mouth fluttered as she tried to find the words to say.

  A strange realization washed over Riley. “Did Mom find out? Is that why they divorced?”

  Hannah looked down.

  “Is it?” Riley said.

  “Your father and I both regret what we did. Ashley had just died. My marriage had become really strained and I just wasn’t in a good frame of mind. Your dad was, and always has been, a dear friend. He was so supportive during that time. And it just… it just kinda happened. That’s no excuse, of course. It was a bad choice. There were a lot of bad choices. Your father and I both knew it.”

  She reached out and grasped Riley’s hand.

  “I’m sorry, Riley. I’m so, so sorry,” Hannah said.

  Riley didn’t really hear her. The strange pressure throbbed against the backside of her eyes again. The woman was crafting something new for Riley’s enjoyment.

  “Did your mom tell you about your dad and me?” Hannah asked.

  “No,” Riley said, her eyes now gazing intently at the center of the table.

  “Did you overhear it in a conversation? Or a fight when you were young? Some little comment that your mom said that you’re only now putting together?”

  “No.”

  “This woman is telling you this?”

  “She’s showing me.”

  “How does this woman know these things? How did she know about Ashley?”

  Riley blinked. Within that briefest flutter of time, when Riley’s eyes reopened, the woman now stood in the center of the empty table. Her eye-sockets, the blood still trailing from them to her cheeks, angled down to stare at Riley. Riley wanted to close her eyes but found herself unable to look away from that pale face and cavernous eyes.

  “Riley?” Hannah repeated. “How does this woman know about Ashley?”

  The woman’s mouth didn’t move, but Riley heard her voice all the same. It echoed around inside Riley’s head.

  Riley repeated what the woman had said. “She found you. She got in.”

  “In? In where? In my head?”

  Riley nodded. “Dad first. And then you. She’s been watching you. She’s been studying you. She’s been looking for weaknesses. Then she moved into Mom.”

  The edges of the woman’s mouth twisted upward.

  “And now she’s in my head.”

  The woman grinned down on Riley.

  CHAPTER 20

  Joe sat at his computer, consumed by his research into Kate’s last few days.

  His back and neck clenched tight from leaning forward. He had stared at the screen so intently that he hadn’t blinked in several minutes, and now his eyes stung from the dryness. At least, that was the reason he told himself for why he suddenly felt the uncontrollable burn of his eyes as they began to water.

  With each of Kate’s personal emails he read, each photo he saw, each transcript of a doctor’s visit, each 911 call that someone was in her home, each new piece of information made him lean in closer, hold his breath, and move with new urgency.

  Apparently, the hallucinations had started only three days before her death. Judging by her emails and transcripts of phone calls to friends, at first it was all vague. The sound of a voice in another room. The hazy outline of a person who vanished the moment the lights turned on.

  By Monday afternoon, she called 911. The report from the officer on the scene found no signs of an intruder and no signs of forced entry.

  There was an email thread between Kate and her friend Fran, someone she knew from yoga whom Joe had met once or twice, where they debated whether or not to tell Riley. Kate didn’t want to worry Riley. But to be safe, she accepted Fran’s offer to loan her a gun.

  Joe’s throat clenched as he read that email. That’s where the gun came from. And yet, he still struggled to believe that Kate, of all people, would ever feel so vulnerable, so terrified, so invaded that she would willingly bring a gun into the house. A house where teenagers screwed around after school. He didn’t need to read police reports or psych evals to know that his ex-wife was not in her normal frame of mind.

  Monday night appeared to have been a sleepless night. From 2 a.m. to 6 a.m., Kate was at her computer, researching schizophrenia and other mental illnesses. Clustered among the unending scrolls through Wikipedia pages were searches about demons and the occult. At 5:43 a.m., Kate, who had never gone to church in her life, pulled up the words to the Lord’s Prayer.

  On Tuesday morning, Kate visited the hospital. The notes from her doctor indicated that after Riley left for school, Kate saw a woman in the house. She caught a good glimpse too. Pale face. Long black hair. Hospital gown. And eyes that made her wonder if the woman was blind. They roamed around her head as her body twitched and spasmed. In the time it took for Kate to pull her phone from her pocket, the woman had vanished. The doctor prescribed some mild sleeping pills and wrote a referral for Kate to see a mental health specialist the following day.

  Kate would be dead before that appointment happened.

  Joe scrolled back and reread the doctor’s description of the hallucination. Of the woman.

  He stared at the words, almost the exact same words that Riley used to describe her. He tried to visualize this woman, but his head just filled with memories from work. The description was fairly generic. Both Kate and Riley might have seen such a woman in any number of horror films. Hospitals and insane asylums — and therefore ghosts that wear hospital gowns — were standard fare in horror.

  Maybe Kate saw some movie when she was young that scared her and implanted in her subconscious. And then, perhaps through stress or an onset of mental illness, her mind dredged up this old terror. Maybe she then mentioned its details to Riley and that’s why Riley was having these same nightmarish visions.

  Joe realized that he had been staring at the doctor’s description of the woman for several minutes. What was happening in the dining room? Had Hannah made any progress?

  He clicked over to the camera feed.

  The image was black.

  No, wait, it was a dark, very dark, red.

  He clicked on the settings, but the discolored image remained.

  Joe put his earbuds back in and turned on the volume. The voices of Hannah and Ril
ey came through clear.

  “What do you mean she’s been ‘studying’ us?” Hannah asked.

  “She found you. She’s been watching you for a while. She doesn’t know how long. She doesn’t know what time is anymore. At first, she could only observe. She was helpless. When she’d leave you, she’d forget most of what she learned. But she’s been getting stronger. Bit by bit.”

  “She told you that?”

  “Yes.”

  “When did she tell you this?”

  “After the police drove me home. I’ve been in the house with her all day. She’ll sometimes say things that I don’t understand. But other times she’ll talk clearly.”

  “I thought she just screamed at you.”

  “She used to. She’s been finding her voice. She’s been getting stronger.”

  “She is?”

  “Yes. Much stronger. And she wants you to know it, too.”

  “What does stronger mean, exactly?”

  “She has more control.”

  “Control over what?”

  “Herself. And me.”

  The conversation paused. Joe listened intently.

  Finally, Hannah asked, “Is she here right now?”

  “Yes.”

  “And she’s telling you all this?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where is she?”

  “On the table.”

  “Right in front of me?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what’s she doing on the table?”

  “She says we’re being watched.”

  “By her?”

  “Someone else. And she’s watching back.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “There’s a camera. Hidden in the light. She’s staring at it right now.”

  Joe looked at his screen, still that dark, swirling red color. Suddenly, it was clear to him — that dark, swirling, red-and-white pattern wasn’t just any pattern. It was blood. A sliced-up eye-socket.

  The eye blinked.

  Joe leapt from his seat.

  The eye moved away. Its owner bent down.

  Joe stared at his screen. Looking back at him was a bloody, pale face. Long, black hair framed the face, but Joe immediately recognized who it was. He knew her only with a shaved head, but he knew it was her.

  It was Bishop.

  Bishop’s mouth twitched into a crooked smile. She held up her quivering hand and gave the slightest indication of a wave to the camera.

  Joe turned and ran from the room.

  He ran down the hall.

  Through the living room.

  He threw open the dining room door.

  Riley and Hannah sat at the table. They both looked at him as he burst in. There was no one else. He raced around the table, bending low to look underneath. Nothing.

  He checked behind cabinets. No one there.

  He waved his hand over the center of the table. Empty.

  He looked up at the camera in the light fixture. Unblocked.

  As far as he could tell, they were alone.

  Finally, he looked over at Riley and Hannah. Riley sat emotionless. Her body seemed to relax as she eased herself a bit more into her seat and stared off. “She’s gone,” Riley said.

  Hannah’s face, meanwhile, was one of grim terror.

  Joe motioned for Hannah to follow him. “We need to talk,” he said.

  Hannah pushed herself back from the table and followed Joe out into the living room. They closed the dining room doors behind them, but they couldn’t help but look around the room. The house, with all its windows and modern furniture, had always seemed so large and spacious, as though it were straight out of a catalogue. But the walls now seemed to have closed in by several feet.

  Joe realized that he hadn’t really been breathing. He had been holding the air in and then sustaining himself with quick heaving inhales. He tried to control it and force himself to take steady breaths. It felt impossible in a room this tight. The very room and house seemed to be holding a pillow over his face. Without waiting for Hannah, he stepped right on through the living room and went outside.

  The cool night air relaxed him. It calmed him just enough to think.

  Hannah joined him. Her wide eyes jumped around, scanning every shadow in this wide blanket of forest. With her gaze constantly on alert around them, she spoke softly to Joe. “I think it’s an Antenna,” Hannah said in a bit of a mumbled whisper, an apparent attempt to keep prying ears from listening in. “I think it’s inside Riley’s head.”

  Joe nodded. “Bishop.”

  “Jesus Christ. Are you sure?”

  “I saw her. On camera. Just now.”

  “Let me see.”

  He looked down at her. “I’m sure it didn’t record anything. But it was her. She wanted me to see her.”

  “Fuck.”

  They both quietly processed that thought.

  “What did she look like?” Hannah asked.

  “She had hair. It’s probably some fragment of a mental image of herself. Her eyes were all scraped up, just like today. She looked right at me, though. Fucking smile on her face.”

  Hannah shook her head, a bit of disbelief seemed to be settling into her otherwise analytical mind. “It doesn’t make any fucking sense. They can only observe.”

  “Apparently not.”

  “This goes beyond remote viewing. This even goes beyond astral projection. We’ve never seen evidence that they can communicate with their targets. Or implant visions. Or have any impact on any minds they intercept.”

  Joe took a deep breath. “Until now.”

  They stood in silence again, contemplating that.

  “From the things Riley was saying, Bishop’s been in our heads for years,” Hannah said. “She knew about Ashley’s death. She knew about the affair—”

  “Fuck.”

  “—she’s been watching us for ten years. Riley says this whole time she’s just been sealed off, growing stronger, and watching our personal lives.”

  Joe’s jaw clenched at that realization.

  “But…” A thought seemed to hit Hannah.

  “But what?” Joe asked.

  “If she’s only strong enough to communicate now, then why Riley? Why isn’t she fucking with you. Or me. Or the people who actually work at the goddamn place?”

  Joe thought. His face grew tight and grim as the realization formed. “She was in Kate’s mind first. She must be feeling things out. Doing experiments. On my family. Bishop is holding my daughter’s mind hostage.”

  Hannah reached into her pocket to pull out her phone. “We have to report this.”

  “No.” Joe grasped her wrist, holding back her phone in his gentle but firm grip.

  “Joe, Bishop is communicating.”

  “I know.”

  “HQ might be able to help.”

  “I know exactly what kind of help the Company will provide.”

  “Oh, come on. They wouldn’t—”

  “You know they would, Hannah. They’ll lock Riley up. They’ll study her. They’ll push this research as far as it will go.”

  “But we’ll be there. We can protect her.”

  “We’ll vanish. They’ll see to it.”

  Hannah stared at him. He could see it on her face that she was trying to decide if he was just being paranoid. Then she gulped. She knew he was telling the truth. “We have to do something,” she said.

  Joe looked around. “She’s probably watching this whole conversation right now, isn’t she? From either your eyes or mine.”

  “Maybe. I mean, probably. If she can, she is.”

  “How many heads can she hop into at once?” Joe asked. “Just one?”

  “I don’t know.” Hannah hugged her arms close as she also looked around.

  “Can she read minds?”

  “I… I just don’t know. I don’t see how. Their ability is entirely linked to the sensory system. In all the sessions and tests, they’ve only been able to intercept the senses.”

/>   “Until now.” Joe said.

  Hannah nodded, thinking. “Okay, but still. She can manipulate the senses. She can implant visions or hallucinations. That’s a far cry from reading minds.”

  “It’s also a far cry from actually harming anyone,” he said.

  Hannah stood silently, not disagreeing but also not endorsing that statement.

  “We shouldn’t say anything else out loud,” Joe said. His face set in a look of determination.

  “What do you have planned?” Hannah asked.

  He shook his head. “We shouldn’t speak about this anymore. You go on home.”

  “What? No.”

  “The last thing we need is for Aguirre to find out you spent the night. There’s nothing more you can do here. I’ll take care of this.”

  “Joe…”

  “We’ll be fine.” He motioned her toward her car. “Drive carefully. Don’t believe anything you see. And don’t mention anything about tonight to anyone.”

  “But what about you and Riley?”

  He put his hands in his pockets and allowed his muscles to finally relax a bit. He had calmed down. “Bishop can watch us. She can follow us around. She can scream at us and jump out and say boo. But she can’t hurt us.” He looked over at Hannah. “I’m gonna talk to her. To Bishop. Just see if I can’t help her out. But I think it’s best if you’re not a part of it.”

  Hannah opened her mouth, ready to protest, but Joe’s face was firm. She nodded her acceptance of his decision. “Just do what’s best for Riley.”

  She turned and walked to her car.

  Joe watched as she climbed in, started the engine, and pulled out of the driveway. As soon as she was safely away, he took a deep breath of the cool night air. Then he turned and walked back into the house.

  CHAPTER 21

  Joe stepped into the dining room.

  He looked down at his daughter as she hunched over in her seat, gazing blankly at the grain of the wood in the table, her eyes pink and damp from exhaustion. He remembered when she was six during those awful two weeks after the family had broken but still lived under the same roof. He stayed at the office as much as he could during those days, but when he arrived home, late at night, he would hear the sounds of sobbing on the other side of her bedroom door.