“Do you like music?”
It’s the fifth conversation starter Grace has tried in as many minutes. Landis dabs at his bloodstained flannel shirt with a tissue and tries to look disinterested, even though he can sense that she keeps taking her eyes off the road to glance over at him in search of a response. And here he had been hoping for a nice, quiet half-hour drive to the lake house.
“Yeah,” he grunts, after another painstaking minute of silence, mostly so Grace won’t try yet another icebreaker. His tongue feels a little better, but his mouth is still unappetizingly full of dried blood. “I play bass. Was in a band a while ago.”
Grace drums her hands on the steering wheel excitedly. “You know, I had a feeling! I was just thinking to myself, ‘I bet he’s a musician’! You just have a look about you.”
“You must be good at reading people,” Landis says.
“Oh, yes.” Grace nods. Her attention is back on the road, but she’s grinning fit to burst. “I’m a little psychic. I’m great at reading peoples’ auras.”
“My God,” Mal says loudly from the backseat, “are you sure she’s not going to murder you?”
“Really?” Landis tries his best to look politely interested, and finds that even a small smile is too much of a strain on his aching mouth. He looks out the passenger side window instead, to hide his expression from Grace.
“Yours is kind of a dark gray. People close to you have died recently, and you’re depressed about it. Afraid, too. But you don’t open up to anyone easily. And you’ve had health problems, maybe all your life.” Grace’s tone is casual, like she’s absolutely sure she’s telling Landis what he already knows.
This is a joke. She could have picked up on any of those things just by eavesdropping at the police station. Landis opens his mouth to say as much, but Grace cuts him off.
“And,” she says, in a low, conspiratory whisper, “I didn’t want to say anything before, but there’s another presence following you around. It came into the car with you. A black aura. Very negative vibes.”
“I bet she says that to all the boys,” Mal mutters. Landis twists around to look at him, and he raises his eyebrows. “What, now you believe this aura stuff? Get a grip, Landis.”
Landis turns back to his window. Is he right? Did I hitch a ride with the only person at the police station less in touch with reality than me? Or does she see what I see, just not as clearly? Maybe assuming he’s the only person who can see the ghosts has been a mistake all this time, but if they hadn’t proven themselves able to manipulate objects just a little bit, Landis would have been perfectly willing to believe that they’re all figments of his imagination. Then again, he lives next to a lake that orders him to kill people. Ghosts being real isn’t too much of a stretch.
Wait. The lake…something’s wrong. It’s not immediately apparent, but when he figures out what it is, Landis sits up a little straighter in his seat. The radio has been running uninterrupted for at least fifteen minutes now. They’re halfway to the lake, and it’s a little less than two hours until midnight, but neither Mr. Dave Matthews nor his band have started demanding blood sacrifices. It doesn’t make any sense - usually if Landis is running this late, the lake goes nuts trying to get him to come home. Maybe something else is occupying it. Maybe whoever the sheriff sent to the house fell in after all.
It seems unlikely. Maybe the lake just knows what he’s planning, and is content to let him follow through with it. Either way, Landis isn’t a fan of the silence from its end, not after having every song, TV show, and book messed with for years. Is it giving up on me now because I’ll be free of it in a couple of hours anyway? Is it mad that I finally decided to up and die?
Landis doesn’t know the answer to any of those questions outside of a hard “maybe”. He doesn’t know anything about the lake. He’s not even sure what will happen if the sacrifices suddenly stop, although he gets the feeling that it won’t be good. Whatever the lake is, or whatever is possessing it, it’s destructive, and it terrifies him. Landis has the idea that you don’t even need to be a psychic to feel the evil radiating off of the lake from yards away. But pretty soon it won’t be his problem anymore.
“You alright?” Grace asks suddenly, startling him into turning away from the window. He had almost forgotten she was there.
“I’m fine,” he says. He tries to smile again. “I was just thinking.”
“What are you thinking about?”
“Yeah, Landis, what are you thinking about?” Mal echoes mockingly.
Landis takes the crumpled piece of tissue in his hand and starts dabbing at the blood on his shirt again, even though it’s long since dried. “Just how none of this is going to matter in a couple of hours.”
Grace doesn’t take her eyes off the road, but Landis sees them go wide.
“What do you mean?” she asks.
“It’s just,” Landis shrugs a little, “it’s pointless worrying about anything now. I’ll be dead in an hour or so, and all of it will be someone else’s problem.”
It feels good to get it off his chest. Grace doesn’t look even a fraction as relieved as he feels.
“You’re going to be dead?” Her voice is high and tense. “Why?”
Why do you care? Landis thinks, but instead says: “Because…because that’s how it has to be. I’m tired of dealing with this whole…this whole thing, and the only way to make it stop is if I kill myself. I can’t move away or try to ignore it, because I have to make it someone else’s responsibility first. And I’ve done…horrible things. Really awful things. There’s a lot of blood on my hands and I, I think I probably deserve to die at this point.”
It’s the longest he’s spoken for in what feels like ages, but once he starts, the words just spill out of him unchecked. They hang in the air between him and Grace for a long moment of silence once he’s done. Even Mal, for once, seems tongue tied.
“I won’t pretend to know even a little of what’s going on with you,” Grace says slowly, “but I don’t think you deserve to die.”
Landis barks a laugh out of his dry throat. “I killed people.”
“You’re under a powerful evil influence.”
“I didn’t have to kill those people! I could have said no. Could have left town and not come back.” Landis starts ripping the piece of tissue in his hand into tiny pieces of blood-stained confetti. “I just want it to stop.”
“Maybe there’s another way to make it stop,” Grace offers kindly. “Austin - the guy Sheriff Maxwell sent to your house - he’s psychic, too. He does all kinds of stuff. He fought a monster once, and won. I bet he could exorcise whatever dark spirits are hanging around you, Landis.”
An exorcism? It sounds outlandish, but maybe it’s worth a try. And if the guy investigating his house is all that Grace says he is, they might actually stand a chance against the lake. Three psychics (well, assuming Grace and this Austin guy really are psychic) against one evil entity. Landis doesn’t hate those odds.
“I’ll still go to jail,” he mutters, “if I live.”
“But you’ll have taken something evil out of the world,” Grace points out. “Instead of taking yourself out of it. I don’t think you’re evil, Landis. You’re trying to do the right thing.”
“Yeah,” Landis grunts, and sinks down into the car seat, fidgeting with the scraps of tissue in his hands. “Okay. We’ll try it your way. But if it doesn’t work, someone’s going to die. Maybe all of us.”
Grace reaches towards him, and Landis flinches away before he realizes she’s trying to take his hand in hers. He lets her do it. Her palm is soft and warm. Landis realizes that he hasn’t intimately touched another human being in months, maybe years.
“No one’s going to die,” she says, and it’s so convincing that Landis almost believes it.
grace my beloved