Chapter 9

PRESENT

2020

Angel sank down to her knees in a fit of dry coughs, and messaged the base of her neck. Her head burned, her brain felt like mush, and her throat was basically on fire.

She watched the man she was now confident was Jenarius Hughes walk to the door. He closed it and latched it and then casually extended a hand to her.

She stared up at him in annoyance.

“What?” he said, mockingly. “I thought we were friends.”

She smacked his hand away and stood to her full height.

This was a test she had signed herself up for and she didn’t want to look weak, not then anyway. She tried hard not to reach for her throat and tried even harder not clear it or beg him for water.

“I’ve been looking for you for three years,” Angel croaked.

She flinched. Talking made everything worse.

“Well, you can get in line.”

Jenarius wasn’t a monster, as annoying as this woman’s entrance had been, he walked to the fridge of his motel room and took out a bottle of water. He tossed it to the woman and she easily caught it with her left hand.

“Sit,” he ordered harshly.

Angel moved towards the table that had Chinese takeout on it and sat down on a plastic chair.

She glanced around the interior of the room. It looked like every Motel that was ever made.

Red bed covers on two beds that were placed against a white wall. There were black and white lamps that matched the paint outside and a white carpet that had been browned by past guests. The door to the bathroom was closed. She took in the sight of an old television set and a white fridge she assumed was full of more water.

She opened her bottle cap and took a long, beautiful, swig.

“First of all,” she turned to Jenarius, “fuck you tenfold for strangling me.”

He shrugged.

“Secondly,” she sighed heavily, “I know what you’re running from.”

Jenarius raised a brow, mockingly.

“Do you, now?”

Angel nodded, “Yes.”

She took another swig at her water and then groaned as the cool liquid trickled down her sore throat.

“You mentioned your brother,” Jenarius said, his brows furrowed in question.

Angel nodded.

“He was only ten when The Mist took him,” she said, “and then he was thirteen when he came back to…”

The last words were painful, that’s what anybody would have assumed, but Jenarius knew exactly what she was going to say only because he had gone through it himself.

“Came back to kill everybody. Everybody except you?”

Angel blinked sadly at him and nodded her head.

She gave in and touched her throat. Jenarius glanced down at her reddened neck and sighed.

Angel watched him walk towards the bathroom.

“So then?” he said. “Why have you been looking for me?”

He opened the faucet in the bathroom and ran a white hand towel underneath it. He wrung it a few times and then turned off the faucet.

“I know where it’s from.”

Her words made him falter in his step and he didn’t know how to feel.

Was she lying? Was this all a trick?

It couldn’t be.

Nobody knew who he was here, and even if they did, they would have just called him a family murderer, a sadistic cannibal, just like every other person who he had left behind in the ashes of his house. The one he had burnt down in Mass.

Angel watched Jenarius drag a chair beside hers. He picked up his gun and then casually sat down and tossed the hand towel at her.

She picked it up and began to rub it over her burning neck.

“Ever heard of Misty Woods Wishing Well?”

Of course, he had. It had been a lame superstitious site that was popular back in the day. Nobody had ever enjoyed using it, apparently that was the curse.

He blinked dully at Angel.

“Don’t waste my time.”

She laughed and he was surprised at how much the sound didn’t annoy him.

“Are you always this angry?”

“Is this a blind date or are you trying to convince me not to shoot you in the face?”

Angel banged the hand towel on the table and nodded.

She faced Jenarius again.

“Your daughter went to that well the day she ran away,” she said. “She was tricked by a force of nature, a demon. Something called Azban.”

What kind of bullshit was he hearing?

“I know this sounds crazy,” Angel started.

Jenarius rolled his eyes.

“What great skills of deception you have.”

He stood up and grabbed the hand towel on the table. He pointed his barrel towards the door.

“Now get the fuck out of my motel room.”

She barely glanced at him, barely acknowledged what he had said.

“I have spent my adult life searching for Shamans, searching for priests. They all told me the same thing. The doesn’t just have a demon working for it, it was the devil himself.”

He narrowed his eyes at her in disbelief and confusion.

“Do you mean to tell me that the devil killed my family?”

Angel nodded.

“Before you open that big mouth of yours again, just hear me out.”

He wanted to, he really did. If he had the time and energy, or the strength, he would have toured the entire universe to find the answer. But now he had to stay far from the tales, far from Massachusetts, for the sake of his boy. If this young, annoying- but attractive- woman said she had a few answers, it wouldn’t hurt him to listen.

What choice did he have?

Jenarius sat down and shrugged.

“You have five minutes.”

Angel didn’t skip a beat.

She leaned forward, right under his nose, and continued to talk with her voice low.

“Firstly, my name is Angel Valerio,” she paused and Jenarius only shrugged. “The tales started years ago, maybe- who fucking knows- but the point is, everybody in our town knew that the well was not to be tampered with. You could wish for anything, wish all you wanted, but without wishing to The Mist, it wouldn’t free him. And that’s when he found a way to release a follower, to release Azban.-

“He’s a trickster spirit but he was tricked himself. Azban had been trailing the city, trying to find a carrier body for The Mist, but his magic couldn’t daze them. That’s when he started to look for kids. Kids like my brother, Julian, and your first born, Phoebe.-

“He channeled her pain. Azban used her worries to lure her to the well and then…he pushed her inside. She was then- obviously- consumed by The Mist.”

Jenarius was listening, he had been since she started, but he couldn’t help but hope that his son wasn’t. He didn’t want Harvey to be scared or worried or both. Harvey was too good a kid to be living such a sick life.

Angel blinked her doe like eyes at him and he snapped back to the present.

If she wanted him to be scared, he wasn’t, and if she wanted him to gasp and bat his lashes at her- he wasn’t.

“Okay.”

She blinked.

“Okay? What do you mean ’okay’?”

Jenarius stood up and shrugged.

“Okay, I gave you five minutes ’okay’ and I think your time is up.”

He knew it had been less than five minutes but he didn’t need to give her time to speak more. He wanted her out of his motel so he could rest up, and then tomorrow morning, he and his son would drive lower. South. Far away from Massachusetts and far away from that fucking Mist.

“Get out of my motel room.”

Angel stood up and glowered at him.

“I want to help you fight it,” she snapped, “because we both know it’s coming back for you.”

He frowned at her.

“How would you know that?”

“It’s a sorrow demon, jackass!” she snapped. “It feeds off sorrow. Sorrow of the family of its victims. Before your son-,” she glanced around the room, “-was born, my brother was it’s last carrier. It left me without a family, without anything, nothing but the memories of the remnants of the bodies it had left behind. I was lucky that I was too young to be called a cannibal. They thought you had just returned to kill another family. The patterns were the same.”

Jenarius took a menacing step forward.

“What does that have to do with him coming back?”

She took a step forward, matching him. He had to commend her guts. This woman wasn’t afraid of him unlike every other person on the planet who had heard of what happened to him.

“Julian isn’t coming back,” her voice broke as she said it, “because there’s nothing for him to take from me anymore. He can’t feed off my sorrow, it isn’t fresh.”

Jenarius frowned at her, “So then, what? It’s over?”

“Never,” it came out as a sigh. “Since 2013, he’s had two carriers for two years. From the year you had your son, he has been coming back for you with Phoebe. Well guess what, friend? She’s coming on the anniversary of her death, right here where you are, and there’s only one way we can stop her. For good.”

Jenarius could have been dreaming and he convinced himself he was. He hesitated and glanced towards the bed where he son was still hiding beneath it and looked back into the eyes of the woman. She was desperate, sad even, she looked just how he had before he was given his child; before Harvey.

She looked incomplete.

That’s what he would become again if he didn’t ask, if he didn’t at least try. He would be running for the rest of his life, he was fine with it, but Harvey deserved better.

“What?”

Angel looked relieved.

“We have to take her back to where it all began.”

Jenarius frowned.

“We have to throw her back into the Wishing Well.”