Luminosity (Gravity Series #3) (The Gravity Series) Page 21

  “Almost a year?” Her yelling was renewed. Her voice would be hoarse tomorrow. “And you didn’t trust me? I’m your best friend, I’ve never lied to you about more than my being okay. I’ve never told you anything but the truth when it mattered. And I never told one of your secrets, not even about you seeing ghosts. How could you lie to my face every day for a year?”

  I couldn’t say anything to defend my choice. Theo was the most loyal friend I’d ever had, even more so than Jenna. Guilt rushed through me.

  “Henry is an asshole,” Theo said.“After the way he treated you, I can’t believe you would be so shallow as to get back with him. And then lie to my face every single time the issue was brought up. Is that why you’ve been so busy and unable to hang out?”

  “I didn’t mean to lie to you. I swear, there was never a moment that I wanted to hurt you. There were reasons….”

  “I don’t care about his reasons! Henry’s phony reasons don’t matter to me; he hasn’t pulled the wool over my eyes.”

  I bit my lip. “He didn’t pull the wool over my eyes. He cares about me.”

  “He only cares about himself. I can’t believe you wouldn’t see that.”

  “Are we still friends?”

  She stopped for a moment, catching her breath, her chest heaving beneath her coat. “I won’t turn my back on you. But it’s not going to be the same, either.”

  She got into the Toyota and sped off through the cold night, as I stood watching helplessly.

  Back inside the restaurant, Alex was getting his things together. He looked like he might start crying; his face was red all the way up to the scalp below his blond hair. Kenny and Ron slid out of their seats and scurried out.

  “I can’t win,” Alex said, ruffling his hair. “I can’t even win by sticking up for her.”

  “Maybe it’s not about winning,” Henry offered.

  “I think it’s really over, man,” he said. “I thought before I had a chance. But now….” He rushed out through the tables and slammed out the door.

  Henry and I stood alone, as the other customers eating their dinners stared at us.

  “Somebody’s got to pay for the food those boys ordered,” the waitress told us sternly.

  With a sigh, Henry whipped out his credit card to pay the meager check.

  “What a waste of a night,” he said.

  “It was an awful night. But maybe not a waste.” I cradled Warwick’s notebook in my jacket.

  ###

  Theo wasn’t at her house. There were no cars in the driveway and the lights were all dark. I’d texted her now three times and received no answer. When I had tried to call her, standing in the dark on her porch, the phone rang once and then she banished me to voicemail.

  Waves of guilt kept hitting me. As soon as one would start to pass, another would overtake me. I’d been a terrible friend, not making enough time for her, not being close when she was pulling away. I knew it had technically been lying, but I’d never in my wildest dreams meant to hurt her.

  Claire was already up in her room by the time I got home. I took off my heels by the door and set them on the rack. It was depressing looking into the unused living room and the kitchen where my father had spent so much of his time. Usually this time of year he would be out stringing lights on the tree. I wanted to call him, but it was past ten o’clock and I didn’t want him to think anything was wrong.

  I stood outside the back door. I didn’t know if Henry would drop by, but I thought it was a pretty good bet. The fleeting worry that Claire might catch us fluttered through my mind, but at that moment, she didn’t scare me. I was fighting much bigger monsters.

  Sure enough, he scooted around the side of the house and I slipped him inside. I locked up and shut off all the lights.

  “Don’t think about it right now,” Henry said later when we were in my basement on the couch. We were each facing in different directions so that his legs rested by my head. “She can’t stay mad forever. She’s your other half; you two are like peanut butter and jelly. Jelly does not a sandwich make.”

  “She holds a grudge like nobody’s business,” I countered. All I could see when I blinked was the hurt, confused look on Theo’s face when she’d caught us kissing.

  “Well, at least distract yourself.”

  He had been reading Warwick’s notebook and he chucked it on my lap.

  The notebook was a study in madness. Full of notes in different handwriting, different colors of ink, all crammed in so there wasn’t a bare spot on any of the pages. If I’d had any doubts of Warwick’s mental state at the time, they were erased upon reading the outpouring of frantic, twisted thoughts. He’d doodled in any of the tiny empty spaces. They were crude images of demonic faces and buckets of dark swirls that looked like blood.

  The contents of the words was even crazier.

  I had a dream last night, not like those dreams of the big sloppy screaming black hole when I have the wanderlust and am in the desert forever, but I had a dream last night instead about the early days.

  Some passages showed lucidity, although the words quickly dissolved into the same gibberish.

  They said that they spoke prayers but there was nothing but demon speech rolling off of their tongues and their mouths were full of the spit of betrayal. They wouldn’t let me join their little club. Club them over the head head heads

  Edgar and I were so unpopular. So was Hugh, but he was the kind of unpopular that is cool because he doesn’t care. He doesn’t see that my coat turns colors. The inside is different than the outside.

  Phillip is going to be the THRONE master, after the last blood-feeding ritual. But his body grows weak, roots rotting, and gray hair sprouting. He needs a vessel. He has a back up plan.

  We passed the notebook back and forth, engrossed in the disturbing contents.

  “Why is it called bloodfeeding?” Henry asked.

  “I’m guessing because they have to put a certain amount of blood on the symbol platforms, and they feel like it’s feeding whatever evil force it is that lurks under our town,” I said.

  “He was utterly batshit insane,” Henry said, shutting the notebook and shaking his head. “Reading this crap makes my head hurt.” He rubbed his red, strained eyes. “How could he have been this crazy and no one noticed?”

  “He was a good actor,” I said. “He didn’t let much show.”

  In hindsight, I could see how a particular look or phrase was suspicious. Except for a few incidents at the time, I’d had no idea that Warwick, my teacher and my father’s best friend, was a ticking time bomb.

  I took the notebook back and read more as Henry tilted his head back on the pillow and dozed off. I kept peeking at him sleeping, the way his eyelashes fanned out over his cheeks and his lips pursed. He didn’t snore, which was nice, but I found the steady rhythm of his breathing comforting and nestled my head against his legs.

  They took the blue boogie van for a joy ride. When they came back a blue girl came with them. Tape over the mouth for the screaming. The screaming claws the space behind my eyes and I want to kill.

  They always test my loyalty. I will claw my way onto that seat. I belong here, I have the blood. Others here when they have no blood.

  At the end of the notebook it was mostly just drawings. It looked like fires with stick figures in them.

  On the very last page, over and over again in crammed script that made my skin tingle, he’d written Hell is closer than you think - Hell is closer than you think - Hell is closer than you think.

  CHAPTER 24

  I WAS DANCING. My body glided around in graceful arcs, feet swooping in effortless time to the music. My eyes were still closed; part of me was delighted that Henry and I were dancing again.

  I opened my eyes, blinked, and felt a shock. Ambrose Slaughter made up the other half of my waltz. He had tied a mauve scarf around his neck, but it was only half-obscuring a gash that had formed there.

  The last time I’d seen him was on Halloween. He
was much paler, and his eyes had darkened to midnight blue. His shirtfront was no longer bloody, thankfully, but he gazed at me so intently it made my stomach tie itself into knots.

  “You’re not a bad dancer for a freak,” he said casually as we continued to waltz across the floor. I saw other dancers moving silently around us, the air filled with the reedy, creepy violin music. Mustard yellow curtains framed the walls. The knots in my stomach turned heavy like lead.

  I looked around us at the other dancers, twisting my head to get a good view as they came into focus. Their skin looked pale and bloodless; even the dresses and suits were nearly colorless, faces blurry below black masks that obscured their eyes.

  I felt weightless as we danced around the gleaming floor. Ambrose’s hand in mine was like sandpaper, solid enough but with a strange quality like grains of shifting sand. As though his hand could crumble at any time without warning.

  “What are we doing here? What are you doing here?”

  Ambrose shrugged, then twirled me around. I felt dizzy as I watched the room spin.

  “No idea. I assumed you were fantasizing this setting,” Ambrose said.

  “Oh yes, in my fantasies I’m dancing with you,” I said in disgust.

  “Don’t worry, I’m not attracted to spazzes.” His eyes darted up and down my body. “Although that dress is doing you a favor.”

  I looked down and realized with an internal groan that the white dress was back on my body. The bottom was a little shredded, stained with brown like mud, but I felt like I couldn’t escape it.

  “I can almost see what Henry sees in you. Even though he has no taste.”

  I scowled at him, trying to let go of his hands.

  “Oh, did I offend you? Get over it,” Ambrose snarled.

  This time I did disengage my hands and moved off of the dance floor. To my annoyance, Ambrose followed me.

  “The ball of the season,” Ambrose said, drawing his words out grandly. Then he snickered. “Ball.”

  “Wow, mature as always, even in death,” I said, rolling my eyes. “First a card game, then a dance.”

  “Have to keep ourselves amused somehow.”

  “Well, where is this? Am I dreaming or am I in Limbo or what?”

  “I told you, hell if I know,” Ambrose said, giving a cursory glance around at the masked figures, gliding like swans. “It feels like we’re in between one place and another. Those people have been dancing for a while. Look, they’re losing their feet.”

  He gestured to the floor and I took a closer look, curious. With horror I saw that many of the dancers’ feet had indeed worn away, leaving them with drifting stumps. There wasn’t any blood, but they were being erased from the bottom up.

  We watched the muted figures caught in their eternal waltz. I realized I could no longer hear the somber music, just the rustling of the dancers’ garments. I couldn’t pinpoint why, but not being able to hear the music made me feel safer. When I was dancing, it felt like I could easily lose my grip on what was real.

  I studied Ambrose beside me, the hard cuts of his cheekbones and jaw, his too-perfect nose. There was too much cruelty in him to ever have been good, but I could definitely see why Jenna was attracted to him.

  “You should take my arm,” Ambrose said.

  I felt like I should be blushing, but I didn’t seem capable of sensing temperature. “What? I’m not going to touch you if I don’t have to.”

  “I may disgust you, but take a gander over there.”

  Ambrose pointed to a trio of black, shadowy figures huddled at the corner of the dance floor. I could make out glowing red eyes in their head shapes, and they were directed towards me. I could faintly hear them growling over the shuffling of the dancers.

  “They’re hungry,” Ambrose said. “And you’re alive. No one else here is.”

  He held out his suit sleeve expectantly, and with a sigh, I begrudgingly wrapped my arm through it.

  Strolling around the exterior of the dance floor, I kept my eyes on the shadows. They seemed to retreat back into the corner, and I could no longer make out their glowing red eyes. I hated to admit it, but keeping this close to Ambrose did make me feel safer. He was a tall, muscular guy after all, with a very commanding personality, even here.

  A big hibachi grill sat with tables set in front of it. It reminded me of a wedding I’d once been to. Seated were department store mannequins with no faces, propped up in different poses. The absurd setup almost made me laugh, but there was grotesqueness to their stiff limbs. Stacks of unopened playing cards were lined up on the tables with candles on top, like decorations.

  I noticed Warwick was standing behind the hibachi, wearing a white chef’s hat and uniform. A bloody handprint was smeared on the front of the apron. Warwick scraped his large knives together, eying a piece of red, raw meat in front of him. His salt-and-pepper moustache was flecked with blood.

  “I didn’t know you cooked,” I told him. “Other than mixing relish and mayonnaise.”

  He looked up at me and grinned his creepy, wide-eyed psycho grin. He was still wearing the heart-shaped eye patch, and the festering red tissue beneath it looked infected. I shivered and clutched Ambrose’s arm tighter instinctively, feeling the sandy matter shift.

  “I have no idea what I’m doing,” Warwick confided, still sliding the knives together with a tooth-aching sound. “I’m just playing chef. Everybody’s going to get food poisoning.”

  He threw his head back and laughed hysterically. A thick trickle of blood and pus started to leak from behind the eye-patch and down his cheek.

  Ambrose hurried me away from him, for which I was grateful. It didn’t seem like Ambrose was really protecting me; he mostly seemed coldly amused. It was hard enough to figure him out when he was alive. His ghostly motives were a mystery.

  “We should have a talk,” he said.

  “About what? How much you wanted to bone my friend?” I looked around, gauging the distance of the shadows.

  “Forget all that for now,” Ambrose said dismissively. “You need to know about Thornhill. Whatever they are planning for is coming soon, and if you have any hope of surviving it, you need to know what you’re up against.”

  “Why would you tell me anything?”

  “Because I feel like it’s my duty.” There I saw the first crack in his hateful facade. Something deeper and more emotional inside. Anticipation twisted me into tangled knots.

  “So tell me.”

  “Thornhill is a cult.”

  “Well, duh,” I said, rolling my eyes. Then I observed his stony expression. “No exaggeration?”

  “Yes. I think they’re so goddamn obvious; I always argued with Lainey about that. Of course, not all of the public members know about it; just the higher ups. Some of them think they’re just doing charity. They needed a few pawns. You’re smart, I’m sure you’ve realized this by now.”

  I nodded, feeling a strange sense of relief. My instinct had been right all along, and hearing that it was true made me feel justified in all the searching and foolish risks I’d taken. Still, it was strange to get confirmation. Strange and scary.

  “What do you know about them?” I asked.

  “Apparently it all started when they were in high school; Phillip became obsessed with John Dexter and a group he’d gotten together in his lifetime. Their group tried to perform a ritual to bring Dark onto Earth with Phillip as the master. But they didn’t know what they were doing. Someone ratted them out.”

  “That girl back then that almost died…” I whispered. Ambrose nodded. “How do you know all of this?”

  “Warwick told me. So, take it with a grain of salt. But, of course, I saw the ritual myself. There are four symbols that they have to activate, and each takes a certain amount of blood. Half of them are activated already, and they’re lying low until they can activate the rest.”

  “But it’s been over a year. Are the symbols still active?”

  “They stay active for quite a long time unt
il they’re used. I guess Dexter’s original group carried out their plan over a matter of a decade. But then it was like the symbols had seals, and the Dark started leaking out.”

  “How do I stop them?”

  “You use your wits,” he said simply.

  “When can I go home?” I asked. The dark shadows on the dance floor were watching me again, their red eyes glowing brighter than before.

  Ambrose’s mouth was instantly at my ear, and the gentle touch of his lips made my flesh crawl. “Click your heels three times,” he whispered.

  And I awoke in the Dark safety of my room.

  ###

  “What’s wrong? Why did you need me to come over so fast?” Henry asked. I motioned for him to be quiet and pulled him down to my room. Claire was moving around upstairs, talking to Deana Ford on the phone. She was talking so loud that I could hear every insincere word, but I didn’t want her to notice a male voice coming from downstairs.

  “We need to talk,” I said once we were safely stowed away. “And you will really, really want to sit down.”

  “Okay,” he said, with a little smirk. He sat down on the bed. “Go ahead. Faint-proof.”

  I took a shudder breath, pushing my hair behind my ears.

  “Are you sure you’re not the one who needs to sit down?” Henry asked.

  “No. I’m just trying to figure out how to explain without sounding even more insane than I already have.”

  “Just get it over with.” I could tell that I was making him anxious.

  I squeezed my eyes shut. “Thornhill is a cult.”

  “Huh?”

  “Thornhill is a bona fide cult. I mean, I’ve suspected it for a while, I know we’ve joked about it. But now I know for sure.”

  Henry leaned back on the bed, studying my face. “How did you get this inside information?”

  “A nasty, ugly birdie told me,” I said, with a dismissive wave of the hand. “I’m telling you, Henry. This goes deeper than we realized. The girls dying was part of a series of symbols, not just the two, and they have to activate them with blood to get some grand plan going.”

  Henry jumped to his feet, looking overwhelmed. He started pacing the room, avoiding eye contact with me. “That would explain the meetings. Would definitely explain the murders. So, what do we do now? We’re not detectives. Nobody’s going to take us seriously.”