Chapter Two

Inevitable

A little over a week after we stopped a pack of crazy people from killing Shannon, I wake up basking in a sense of... imminent dread.

What the heck?

This whole psychic thing would be a lot easier to deal with if whatever caused humanity as a whole to discard belief in magic and so forth centuries ago never happened. Imagine if I could just go to the internet and look up psychic phenomena and get real answers instead of ads for tarot card readers or scam hotlines?

Then again, if magic and the supernatural had remained a common facet of life… would there even be an internet? Maybe people would all have giant crystal balls in their living rooms instead of televisions.

Meanwhile... something is wrong, and I don’t know what.

Yeah, obviously, there is a lot wrong all over the place. But... if some random person I’ve never met is going to be hit by a car in a few hours, I wouldn’t feel it coming. So, a lot of bad things happen completely outside my awareness. It sounds kinda bad to say, but I’m glad. Getting a feeling about every bad thing happening to anyone all over the world would drive me insane.

So, yeah. Me feeling a sense of dread means something bad is going to directly affect me or someone I love.

I jump out of bed and check on the kids. I’m awake really early. It’s barely past five in the morning. Still dark out… I think.

Paxton’s curled up amid her sea of stuffed animals. Tammy is sleeping in her bed, which has a significantly lower quantity of stuffed animals… as in none. Anthony is awake at his computer. He looks over when I poke my head in.

“Morning, Ma.”

“Morning.”

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

“Not sure. Got a bad feeling is all.” I exhale slowly, letting my mind wander. “That said, it’s not even a tenth of the feeling I got last week from the Amber Alert.”

Anthony returns his attention to the game on his computer. “Well, that’s good. Probably means it’s going to be unpleasant but not horrible.”

“That’s not helping.” I rake my fingers through my hair. “Whatever’s coming, it’s probably only going to be moderately crappy. Get ready for strangeness, kiddo.”

“Always am.” He chuckles.

I back out of his doorway and meander to the kitchen. It’s too early to even start on making any sort of organized breakfast. There’s also no way I’m going back to bed, so I decide to make coffee and stand there watching it brew.

Fairly sure this has nothing to do with Shannon. The cops ‘found’ her in good health. She no doubt told them about her abduction and the crazy cultists who were going to kill her, but she somehow managed to slip the duct tape and run away. I think. No idea what story she actually believes or told them .

It bothered me a little to leave her to run down the hill to the gas station by herself, but it ended up being for the best. Much less complicated if the authorities do not connect the Moon family with the situation at all. Maybe they’ll go into the woods and search. They’ll find the altar and a whole lot of gore all over the place. No clue what the police will think of the cultists’ bones stripped of flesh and scattered around. Maybe they’ll think it’s part of the ritual and the cultists brought the bones there.

The more I think about that kid and the idiots who kidnapped her, the more convinced I am this current feeling of approaching gloom has nothing to do with her. No, that situation is almost certainly going to be fine.

An hour later, I still haven’t come up with any explanation for my sense of dread. Knowing something bad is coming and having no clue what to do to prepare for it is damn near the worst feeling in the world. I’d rather step barefoot on a Lego brick.

When the girls don’t show up to the kitchen, I start to worry… then realize it’s Saturday. No alarms will be going off.

A soft knock comes from the front door.

That’s odd. I set my coffee mug down and make my way to the door, unsure what to expect.

I’m more than a little surprised to see my sister, Mary Lou, standing there. As soon as I look at her, the imminent doom feeling that’s been hanging over me all morning bursts into a flurry of butterflies swarming my stomach. The grim expression on my sister’s face only makes it worse. My head starts spinning with possibilities about the meaning of my psychic hit. Did something happen to Rick? Did one of her kids end up in the hospital? No, can’t be. She doesn’t look anywhere near upset enough for all that .

I wave her inside and close the door. She fast-walks to the kitchen and goes straight for the coffee pot, helping herself to a mug.

She’s obviously bringing bad news, the kind of bad news one doesn’t give over the phone. She’s not crying, shaking, or seeming out of sorts, so I am hopeful the news isn’t horrible.

After fixing herself a cup of coffee, she sits at the kitchen table.

“Might want to sit,” says Mary Lou, gesturing.

“That bad?” I ease into the chair I vacated moments ago.

She lets out a long, slow breath. “I dunno. Surreal more like it. You know it’s coming, but you’re never quite ready for it when it does.”

Ugh. Damn. Something’s happened to our parents. It’s the only explanation that fits her mood and what she just said. Either that or her youngest wants to move out already at sixteen and she’s being melodramatic. It can’t be something sudden, so that rules out accidents or violence. Know it’s coming… That works both for kids growing up and moving out as well as parents getting old.

My gut’s telling me something’s up with Mom and Dad. There’s a very tiny note of revenge in my sister’s eyes. As amazing as she was for us growing up, there had to be at least a little resentment in her toward our parents. Dad was often away from home, first with the baseball thing when he played in the minors, and then with a job he had that kept sending him all over the place. Some sort of sales thing. I don’t remember, I was too little to care about that sort of thing. Eventually, he got the idea to open a strange store selling homeopathic remedies, crystals, and all sorts of various other hippie nonsense. I must’ve been around fifteen or so when that started.

As far back as I can remember, Mom’s been flakier than a two-week-old croissant. I used to think she was simply crazy, or suffering from some sort of early onset Alzheimer’s… or de mentia. She’d sit for hours in her greenhouse garden, barely aware us kids even existed. Some days, she’d be entirely absorbed in a hobby like pottery or painting. Other days, she’d just stare into space for hours. Right now, looking back on it, I wonder if she might have had an experience with vampires or demons and it broke her mind.

“What happened?” I ask.

“Dad.” Mary Lou sips coffee, staring down at the table.

“How’d he die?” I ask, surprisingly neutral in mood.

It’s not like I hate the man. It would be closer to say I didn’t really know him. My memory of my father is about eighty percent ‘some guy who lives in the house with us’ and twenty percent one bad argument we had when I was eighteen. He didn’t think I belonged in college. But so much time has passed that I don’t really remember if he was being a jerk and saying girls didn’t need to get educated or if he simply thought higher education in general was some sort of scam—or government conspiracy. He’s never liked the government, or cops, or anything like that. The guy fancied himself some sort of counterculture guru, only nothing he did hadn’t been done before by someone else. We used to joke that we might come home one day to find a bunch of strangers there because Dad started up a cult.

Nothing creepy or dangerous… his cult would just sit around all day smoking weed, dropping acid, and wondering what the color blue tasted like. So, yeah. Dad really didn’t like that I was becoming part of the machine by going to college. Tried to call me stupid and everything he could think of to talk me out of it so that I would spend my entire life in or near Klamath, waiting freaking tables until I got too old to walk.

Sigh.

Maybe I am a little bitter.

“He’s not dead... yet.” Mary Lou sips her coffee again. “Got a call last night from a doctor. He’s got late-stage lung cancer. The doctor said he’s terminal, probably has less than a month left. Apparently, his cancer was very advanced before he got any kind of medical attention. There’s nothing they can do for him at this point.”

“Sounds like Dad. His leg could fall off and he’d insist he didn’t need a doctor.”

I reach over and take my sister’s hand. She’s feeling a bit guilty for being mad at him these past few decades. Nothing quite like death to get people to bury hatchets. Not saying we had any arguments or open hostility—or anything like that. We (and by we , I mean myself and Mary Lou) just haven’t had much contact with our parents since we left home in our teens. Mary Lou met Rick, got married six months later, and went to live with him. I went to college.

All the craziness in my life’s only made that harder. How do I show up to visit my parents when I should be approaching fifty but I still look like I’m in my later twenties? For crying out loud, Mary Lou looks like she could be my mother now. Technically speaking, she basically was my mom … so appearances now mirror the reality we lived. I don’t mean she literally gave birth to me. She’s only a few years older than me. Just… stepped in and raised us all since our parents were too busy or too preoccupied with other things to really notice kids existed in the house.

“A month.” I swirl coffee around my mug. “Suppose I should at least go see him before he dies.”

“Probably… but.” Mary Lou fidgets. “It’s going to be a little complicated.” She points to my face.

I shrug one shoulder. “We could tell him the complete truth. For one thing, who would believe the ramblings of a dying old man if he tried to tell anyone one of his daughters became a psychic vampire immortal?”

Mary Lou gives a maudlin chuckle.

“For another, if he’s only got a month left… it’s not like he’s going to run around telling everyone. ”

“But what if he freaks out?”

“Freaks out?” I blink.

“You look young enough to be your own daughter.”

I laugh. “Maybe if I got knocked up at seventeen.” I pause, then smirk. “That probably would have bothered him less than going to college.”

She lets out a guilty laugh. “I think he expected it of us. The getting pregnant young thing, I mean.”

“Probably did.” I take a large swig of coffee, nearly draining the rest of the mug. “Bet the old man considers it a win that only one of his kids ended up in jail.”

She snickers.

Of course, I’m talking about our brother, River. Idiot stole a car when he was eighteen, got sentenced to two years. He told the court he got high and didn’t really know what he was doing. The truth was, he wanted to try and sell it for some quick money because we had to fix up the house and Dad couldn’t afford it. They let him out after only like five months, though… with probation. Some kind of suspended thing. Like, okay you did this, but if you don’t do anything else, we’ll pretend you didn’t. As far as I know, he hasn’t gotten into any more trouble with the law since.

“Speaking of the boys, have you been able to reach any of them?” I ask.

“Only Dusk.”

I blink. “Wow, impressive. Figured he’d be the hardest to find.” The last I heard, Dusk had ended up as some sort of wandering homeless artist somewhere in Europe.

“He answered his email.” Mary Lou flicks her thumbnail at the mug. “River’s a bit too much like Dad. He probably has email, but doesn’t understand how to use it.”

I chuckle. “Haven’t heard much about him, honestly.”

“He got divorced again.” Mary Lou sighs.

“Again?” I blink. “He got remarried? ”

“He married this woman named Victoria like eight years ago. They’ve got a ten-year-old daughter named Hailey. Not sure why they divorced, but that’s over.”

“He had a kid with Ashley, too, didn’t he?” I pour more coffee into my mug.

“Two boys. Bryce is fifteen and Colton is twelve,” says Mary Lou in a flat tone. “Of course, I haven’t seen him or the boys since Colton was an infant.”

“Mom?” asks a soft voice from the doorway.

I glance over at Paxton, still in her Pikachu pajamas. “Morning, hon.”

Yes, some people might say she’s a little old to wear Pikachu onesie, but she doesn’t care.

“Why do you feel so guilty?” Paxton yawns and enters the kitchen, heading for the cabinets by way of giving my sister a quick greeting hug. “Hi, Aunt Mary Lou.”

My sister hugs her back. “Morning, sweetheart.”

“I could make eggs if you want… or pancakes,” I suggest.

“Cereal’s fine.” Paxton stands up on tiptoe and stretches to reach for a box in the cabinet. “So, why do you feel guilty?”

“It’s a long story.” I sigh. “Short version is our father was away a lot when we were kids. And when he was home, he kinda ignored us all. Wasn’t mean to us, just kinda acted like we were mooching roommates who didn’t pay rent rather than his kids. And now he only has a month to live.”

Pax sets the cereal box down on the counter and looks at me. “So you’re feeling like that because you were mad at him for a long time?”

“I guess.” I bury my face in my hands, feeling weird. Tired, wired, guilty, and confused all at once.

Outside of unexpected tragedy, people will always face the day where they have to come to terms with losing their parents. I suppose an argument could be made that I lost them already, many years ago. A situation like this would be a far more emotional and difficult process for anyone who had a good relationship with their dad. At least I don’t hate the guy. I’m not going to go dance on his grave or anything. In all honesty, I’m angrier at Danny’s parents than him. They tried to poison my kids against me. (I’m never going to forgive them for that.) But, my own father dying? Ugh. I probably should be more upset than I feel. Question is, do I fake being more emotional than I am so that I seem normal to everyone else, or do I just act like myself?

Is it a problem that this news isn’t hitting me very hard? Maybe. Guess I shouldn’t have avoided him this long and carried that grudge about our argument for years. Can’t remember the last time we even spoke except for that argument. I’m not entirely convinced our fight was the last words we exchanged, but it’s so prominent in my memory that it’s blocking out anything after that. It’s not like I ran away from home or moved out the day of our big argument… so it’s more or less certain we spoke after the fight. I kinda remember him being real moody with me, as if me not changing my mind about going to college was some sort of direct insult to him or something.

Of course, once I actually went to college, that’s another story. Good chance I really didn’t have any contact with my parents after that point. School was an absolute blur of academic work and literal work. I just barely managed to afford to keep going, working two crappy jobs in between classes. I had zero time for anything else.

These days, I have plenty of time.

Ugh. Yeah. I really should go visit him. If he doesn’t want to see me, that’s on him. At least I’ll make the effort.