They

Chapter Twenty-one

VINCE WALTERS AND Tracy Harris waited at a little café on Venice Beach for almost three hours.

They spent most of that time talking, looking out at the boardwalk and the ocean. The boardwalk was crammed with joggers, roller-bladers, people walking dogs. There were street vendors hawking everything from bootleg designer clothing and perfumes, to ice cream and hot dogs. On the beach, sunbathers caught the last rays of the sun, and scratch volleyball games were underway. The cry of seagulls blended in with the hum of traffic, and the steady bass thumping of rap music that boomed from large boom boxes carried on tattooed shoulders. Vince and Tracy sat at their table and talked, their eyes hidden by dark sunglasses as they finally ate a light dinner of salads and chicken sandwiches.

Vince tried to call Mike at two-thirty with his cellular phone. He got no answer. “Try Frank,” Tracy suggested. They had ordered drinks and were nursing them in the warm afternoon sun.

Vince tried Frank and got a busy signal.

“Well?” Vince said, pushing the antennae down.

“Well,” Tracy said, looking out at the ocean.

“What do you think we should do?”

“You can’t get in touch with them?”

“Nope.” Vince shook his head.

Tracy frowned. “Hmm. Well… they did tell us to get a room nearby.”

“And we have one,” Vince said. Before they stopped at the café, they’d secured a room at a Best Western half a block away.

“We could go back to the room and keep calling,” Tracy suggested.

Vince felt nervous. “What if we still can’t get in touch with them?”

Tracy pursed her lips, thinking. “Mike did say that if we don’t hear from them, we should drop out of sight.”

“Drop out of sight?”

“Or we can go home.”

Vince couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Aren’t you afraid of… of what might happen?”

“What might happen, Vince?” Tracy looked at him. “You tell me. We’ve come here at Mike’s request, now he and Frank don’t show up. They fed us this bullshit that this spooky devil cult is on to us, and they can’t even so much as show up and—”

“Suppose they got them?

“And who is they?”

Vince looked at Tracy as if she’d gone crazy. He didn’t know what to say; his mind was a jumble of emotions, all fighting to the surface. “You bug the shit out of me last night to get you involved and… and…”

“Listen,” Tracy rested her hand on his forearm, her features softened. “I’m sorry. I know I was a pest last night, and I really was angry at being left out. I really did want to be included. But… what else can we do? We were given explicit instructions. Now things haven’t gone according to plan. They may have gotten to Frank and Mike, and if that’s happened we have to know about it. And the only way to know is to go back and—”

“No!” Vince was adamant. He wasn’t going back to his home.

Tracy’s grip on his wrist tightened. “Hear me out for a minute, okay?” She glanced around quickly and Vince looked around, too. Nobody was paying attention and he felt the tension slacken.

Tracy leaned forward, her voice lowered to a whisper. “If they’ve gotten to Mike and Frank, we don’t know about it, right? So we go to our places and get our stuff, okay? We tell Brian we’re taking time off from work and we go into hiding. We go somewhere we know they won’t even think of looking for us. Montana or something. Hell, we’ll go to Alaska. Surely you’ve got to have enough money in savings to tide you over for a few years, right?”

Vince nodded. Along with stock options, he was worth a couple of million dollars if he cashed out on everything.

“Then we shack up together, live under a different name, whatever it takes to be far away from this place,” Tracy continued. “Maybe we’ll learn the truth and find out that Mike and Frank really just decided to drop out of the investigation.”

“And not tell us?”

“Why not?” Tracy took her sunglasses off. Her green eyes were reflective. “Maybe they tried contacting us. It doesn’t matter. Maybe they just decided the best way was to… just run away.”

“Frank… run away?” Vince shook his head. Tracy Harris didn’t know Frank Black.

Tracy ignored him. “And if they did, maybe that’s for the best. You know?” Her touch became soft now; her hand caressed his arm. “Maybe it’s best to leave things alone. What happened in the past is the past.”

Vince wanted to argue the point, but for every argument he had, Tracy had a counterpoint. They continued the discussion on their walk to the Best Western. Once behind locked doors, Tracy slipped out of her clothes. “I’m done discussing this. Try calling them again and see if you get an answer. I’m taking a nap.”

Vince watched her for a moment, sitting on a chair near the bed. Then he pulled the cell phone out and tried both numbers again. Neither man picked up.

Vince closed his cell phone, but kept it turned on. Tracy slipped into bed. She fluffed a pillow and lay down on her left side, her back to him. Case closed.

Vince sat in the chair for a while, watching her. Maybe Tracy was right. Maybe it was time to stop this mad chase. Where had it gotten him? Nowhere. He was no closer to finding out what had happened to his mother than he’d been last month.

Besides, he thought, we were supposed to turn everything over to Mike’s friend, Billy something. This afternoon. So why haven’t Mike and Frank been in touch?

Vince tried calling Mike and Frank again. Once again, neither man picked up. The calls didn’t even go through to voice mail, which Vince found odd. He sat in the chair and looked out the window, worry gnawing his gut as Tracy dozed in the king-size bed behind him.

VINCE PULLED THE Volvo up to the curb in front of Tracy’s sprawling condominium complex the following morning at nine-thirty, feeling a weight settle in his chest.

Tracy turned to him, looking radiant. “Well, this is it, I guess.”

“Yeah, this is it.” He felt funny about doing this, but it had been decided this morning. They really were going to do it.

Vince had dozed in the chair yesterday afternoon while Tracy napped. When they woke up, they got dressed and ventured out onto the boardwalk again. Vince tried calling Frank and Mike again. Tracy looked concerned and asked Vince what they would have wanted Vince to do should anything happen to them. Vince had shrugged. “They’d probably want me to go to that lawyer friend of Mike’s,” Vince had said.

“Do you know his name?” Tracy had asked.

“Billy something. Greck or Greek or something like that.”

They’d spent the evening walking the boardwalk talking, debating what to do. It was obvious something was going on. Vince was positive that one of the first things Mike would have done was to take what they had to Billy. “What then?” Tracy had asked. Vince put forth the idea that maybe they would have all gone into hiding. Tracy countered that maybe Mike and Frank had already gone into hiding; maybe they’d taken their cumulative evidence to Billy, who had immediately put them into a safe house or something. “And nobody would have tried getting in touch with us?” Vince asked. He’d checked his cell phone, something he’d done all day and into the evening. “I don’t know if I buy that.”

“Well, Mike did tell us that if we didn’t hear from them that we were to go into hiding,” Tracy had reminded him. “If you ask me, I think we should.”

Vince had agreed, and after snagging dinner at a fast food restaurant, they’d headed back to the Best Western and remained inside for the remainder of the night.

This morning they’d gotten dressed and packed, then checked out of their room. They had a quick breakfast at a Denny’s restaurant, and then drove home. Vince had tried calling Mike and Frank again and still got no response. Tracy suggested they head back to Vince’s home again, just on the off chance they might have stopped by. Vince agreed, and they’d made his house the first stop. There’d been no messages at home, and it was while they were sitting in the kitchen at the breakfast nook that last night’s discussion came up. “We’ve been here for thirty minutes and nobody’s tried to kill us yet,” Tracy had said, her voice bearing the faintest inflection of humor. “What does that say about your paranoia?”

“That they’re waiting for you at your place?” Vince couldn’t help but grin.

“You coming with me to scope it out?”

“Of course!”

They agreed on the plan of action on the five-minute drive to the condo. Walk her to her condo, check the place out, and once she was safe, he would go home and start making preparations to leave. In the meantime, she would pack as well. They agreed to meet up that afternoon at two, at her place. “In the meantime, do whatever you have to do,” she’d said. “Convert cash to traveler’s checks, take whatever you need. Pack lightly, but pack essential stuff. Anything you may have to further your research, take it. If you have to call somebody to look over your house, get that taken care of as well.”

That had sounded fine to Vince. Now as he followed her along the manicured path to her condominium, he felt his heart racing. The summer day was warm; a perfect, Southern California day. He could hear people splashing in the pool. They walked up the steps to her condo and Vince surveyed the complex as Tracy unlocked the door. She stepped in cautiously, and then glanced back over her shoulder. “Looks like the coast is clear.”

Vince stepped inside ahead of her and took a quick inspection of the place. He quickly checked the kitchen and both bedrooms, opened the closets, and looked in the bathroom. “Looks like everything’s cool,” he said.

Tracy looked relieved. “Good.” She held out her arms. “C’mere.”

Vince went to her and they held each other for a moment. Her body felt warm and comforting against his and he kissed the nape of her neck, inhaling the scent of her hair. He didn’t want to leave her.

“You should go,” she said, as if reading his thoughts.

He kissed her again and squeezed her hands. “I’ll be back at two.”

She nodded, mustering a smile. “Two.”

“Okay. Bye.”

“Bye.”

Once in his car, Vince felt a sense of urgency come over him. He glanced at his watch; it was almost ten a.m. That left him with less than four hours to get things rolling. Where to start?

He started his car and thought about what he had to do; go home, call Brian and tell him he had to take an unexpected leave of absence—he would explain everything in a week or so. Hell, he might even be back home in a few weeks. He just had to get away from everything; the stress of his mother’s passing, dealing with her affairs, it was all taking a huge toll. Surely Brian would understand.

He decided the best thing to do would be to head straight home. Maybe he would swing by the motel that Frank Black had stayed at, just to see if he was still there. It was very weird that both men would simply cease communications. It was almost as if they’d dropped off the face of the earth.

Vince frowned. Maybe Tracy was right about getting out of dodge as soon as possible. Whoever it was that had tried to kill them back in Pennsylvania, as well as attacked him and Tracy at the airport last week, operated with stealth. Suppose they had gotten Mike and Frank? And if that was the case, suppose they were after him now?

While Vince was stopped at a red light at the intersection of Adams and Harbor Boulevard, he dialed Frank’s cell phone again. He got no response. The light turned green and he continued east, pausing only once more at the next stop light to look up Mike Peterson’s number on the notebook he had on his dashboard and dial the number. Again, nothing.

His thoughts darkened as he drove home. Even if The Children of the Night were a bunch of crazed lunatics, they were obviously very well connected and crafty ones. They were most likely behind his mother’s murder, as well as the crimes Mike and Frank had connected to them. It was obvious his mother had been involved with them, as were Frank’s parents. And it was also obvious his mother had fled with him unexpectedly twenty-five years ago in an attempt to flee the madness. As to why they were after him now, he was beginning to formulate some educated guesses, none of them based on paranoia, either. They’d finally tracked his mother down and had her killed. That much was evident. They’d also performed some kind of ritual around the same time—its end purpose still unknown to Vince. Next, somebody tried to kill him as he was arriving back home from his mother’s funeral, at John Wayne Airport. The fact that Tracy Harris had been with him was entirely coincidental. Then Frank Black pops into his life, claiming to have done extensive research on his own childhood, on Vince’s childhood, and tells him point blank that their parents had been Satanists. Mike Peterson supports Frank’s story, and tells him what happened to Frank’s father. And then they fly back to Pennsylvania and meet with Reverend Powell, go through the contents of his mother’s safe box and find additional supporting evidence that hints at other horrific crimes. Then while meeting with the local sheriff about other cult activity, they’re ambushed by strangers armed to the teeth. They get away, killing their assailants in the process, and manage to get out of the state. In the meantime, Mike and Frank find out more information about cult members that had been in Lititz prior to Vince’s mother’s murder, and they fly back to LA two nights ago to regroup. Meanwhile, Mike’s wife has gone missing while they were gone, and it’s obvious that the cult was getting closer on their trail, and now Mike and Frank were incommunicado.

So now what?

It was imperative that Vince and Tracy leave California immediately. If Mike and Frank had been waylaid by the Children, it meant they’d been followed. And if that was the case, somebody might be on Vince’s tail this very instant. Vince didn’t think they were—he’d been checking his rearview mirrors constantly—but he still wasn’t taking chances. When he got home he would pack quickly, gather whatever important evidence he had, make some quick phone calls, and then he was leaving. But first he would check the house out carefully and make sure it was secure. He still had the Glock that Mike had given him last night—he’d packed it in his luggage in Pennsylvania and had taken it with him to the house—so he felt somewhat better about having it. Now he had to get through the next few hours.

When he entered his development he was on the lookout for anything suspicious. He inspected everything, taking in every car, every person he saw in his neighborhood. People that he was familiar with, that he had known for years, now came under close scrutiny as he passed by. When he pulled into the driveway of his home his heart was pounding. He killed the engine, reached to the seat next to him for his bag, and got out of the car. His senses were on heightened alert as he unlocked the door. He entered the house and closed the door softly behind him. All was silent.

He set the bag down on the floor carefully. Then he reached for the Glock in his inner coat pocket and pulled it out. He felt sweaty and hot and he took a deep breath to calm himself down. Then, he took a step further into his house.

He inspected the house with a sense of rising alarm, expecting danger at every step. The first time he threw a closet door open and pointed the gun inside, he felt like he was going to scream—he really expected somebody to jump out at him. But as he went from room to room checking under beds, behind furniture, in closets and cabinets, he felt his paranoia ease. It took fifteen minutes to inspect the garage, and when he was finished he checked out his backyard, looking at the space between his home and the fence that bordered his property with his neighbor’s. His yard was small anyway, and there was really nowhere for anybody to hide, but he checked it out regardless. He even stepped all the way out in his backyard and looked up on the roof and in the trees. Nothing there. When he went back in the house he felt somewhat relieved, but he was still nervous.

He checked his answering machine and saw that there was one message. He rewound the tape and played the message. “Vince, it’s me, Frank.” Vince gasped at the sound of Frank’s voice; he detected a faint hint of fear in his voice. “Where the hell are you? I’ve been trying to call you for three hours now, man. Turn your fucking cell phone on!” Then there was a click and a dial tone. End of message.

Vince frowned. Frank must have tried calling him yesterday, but… what was this about asking Vince to turn his cell phone on? He’d had it on all day yesterday.

Vince unclipped his cell phone from his belt and inspected it. Sure enough, it was on, and the juice was at the halfway mark; he’d recharged the battery last night, right before he went to bed. He remembered it being almost down to zero when he’d hooked it up because he’d had it on all day. And Frank was telling him to turn his phone on? It had been on!

When it rang Vince almost dropped the cellular. He felt his heart shoot into his throat, and for a moment he actually felt the cell phone fly from his hands, as if its ringing had sent it zinging out of his grip. Vince fumbled with it, almost dropped it, then got a firm grasp as it rang again. He held onto it, heart thumping in his chest as he tried to catch his breath. The phone rang again, spiking through his nervous system. Okay, already, I’m coming.

He pulled the antennae out and hit the send button. “Hello.”

For a moment, there was nothing, then a hiss of static. “Hello?” Vince raised his voice a little. It sounded like a bad connection.

“Vince?”

There was something recognizable about that voice. “Yeah?”

“Vince…” A pause, a crackle of static. “Vince, it’s Frank.” It sounded like Frank was out of breath and calling from far away.

“Frank!” Vince felt a wave of relief wash over him. He sighed, felt his body ease up as he started to sink into the sofa. “Man, I’ve been trying to call you and Mike for the past twenty-four hours. What’s—”

“I don’t have much time, Vince, listen to me.” Frank’s voice was suddenly loud and direct, as if the connection was suddenly re-established. Vince frowned; there was something in Frank’s voice that gnawed on him. Something tha— “I’m hurt, Vince,” Frank said, and now Vince recognized the heavy breathing in Frank’s voice. He was panting, his voice tinged with an inflection of pain. “I’ve been… it fucking got me, man.”

“What?” It got me? What got him?

“Listen carefully,” Frank said, and now Vince detected the urgency in his voice. He felt his stomach roll in his abdomen. “They were one step ahead of us. I don’t want to get into it now, but I got away. I’ve… managed to elude them at least for a little while, and I had to call you… to warn you…”

“Where are you?” Vince heard his voice, panicked, frightened.

“I’m at a phone booth, somewhere in Fountain Valley… maybe Huntington Beach.”

“Listen,” Vince said, thinking quickly. “Hang up now and call 911. I’m leaving for the hospital now—”

“No!” Frank’s voice was a hiss of pain. Vince cringed; his nerves were on edge. “Listen to me… I know everything now… I put it all together and… I know why… why all that happened to us… happened… why we had the same dreams… why we… why we went through what we did when we were kids…”

“Frank,” Vince muttered, feeling the dread rising. He didn’t want to hear this. He just wanted to find Frank, find him and help him, but he felt powerless to do anything except listen.

“You were wrong, Vince,” Frank said, gasping, breathing heavily now. “I was right… about most of it. Our parents… The Children of the Night… it’s all real…”

“Frank, I know they’re real,” Vince said, trying to inject an inflection of authority in his voice, a sense of reason. “I know these people think they’re performing some—”

“They don’t think anything, Vince!” Frank barked. “They know! It’s the real thing. The Children… they’re the real deal. They put us through those rituals… they exposed us because it was all part of the plan. And…” A wheeze in his breathing. “…and our minds suppressed it… it’s like those Vietnam vets that bury the memories of the war in their subcon-scious… they carry it with them and then it starts coming out… just a little bit… at a time…”

“Frank!” He did not want to hear this, he DID NOT—

“…they brought us to the rituals because… because it was part of the plan… and you…” his breathing grew heavier, as if he were struggling. “You…”

“Frank you don’t have to say this,” Vince begged. “Please, just hang up and call—”

“…you’re important to them,” Frank said, ignoring him. Vince wasn’t even sure if Frank was listening to him, if what he was telling Frank was even registering. “You’re important to them because they’ve worked at bringing you into the world for so long. And then your mother almost ruined their plans by taking you from them—”

“Frank!” Vince shouted. He closed his eyes, not wanting to hear this, knowing what Frank was going to tell him, but not wanting to hang up either.

“—but they found you, they actually found you almost ten years ago! Can you fucking believe that!”

And what Frank said about the Children finding him ten years ago stopped him. He opened his eyes, suddenly frozen. “Ten years…”

“Yeah? Can you believe that?” A hiss of pain. Vince could dimly make out the background noise of traffic. “They’ve been working at you, prepping you for ten years now.”

“Prepping me for what?”

A soft gasp, a hiss of pain. “I can’t get it to stop bleeding.” Frank’s voice broke. He began to sob. “Oh God, it really got me…”

Vince felt his chest tighten up. “What are they prepping me for, Frank?”

“You’re it,” Frank said, and Vince could barely make out what he was saying through his tears. “Just like you said… I know you weren’t serious about it at first, but in a way you were right, Vince. They didn’t bring you into this world to be the Anti-Christ, Vince… they brought you here to be the Red Opener—”

“What?” Was Frank kidding him with this shit?

“You are the Red Opener,” Frank continued. “You’re not the Anti-Christ. You’re the doorway that will allow Hanbi entry into this world.”

Suddenly, Vince’s mind went back to that day when he’d walked into his mother’s bedroom for the first time in over twenty-five years. His mind flashed on those symbols drawn in thick blood on the bedroom walls, those strange words that looked to be indecipherable gibberish and one of those words now leaped out at him. Hanbi. “I don’t know what that means,” Vince said.

“I don’t have a lot of time,” Frank began, his voice tinged with pain. “I learned some of this in my research, but I didn’t think the Children were that heavily into him. In ancient Assyrian myth, Hanbi is the father of Satan; he’s also the father of the demon Pazuzu.”

“Father of Satan? I don’t understand. How can Satan have a father? I thought he was originally an angel—”

“No! He wasn’t an angel because there’s no such thing as angels! There’s no such thing as God, either! Just shut up and listen!”

Vince held his breath and listened, his heart hammering madly in his chest.

“Hanbi is its oldest name,” Frank continued. “He’s known as Hanpa in Western Civilization. Throughout ancient history he’s been known by many names. Ancient Mesopotamia has a myth about a being called Hanbi, a creature that was mentioned in numerous oral stories. A few archeologists believe he was actually worshipped by primitive man, by Neanderthals. The Assyrians and the Sumerians had numerous gods and demons. Pazuzu was known as an evil god of the wind who brings disease to man. Belial was an evil underworld deity who became Satan in Judaism. He was also known in other Middle-Eastern cultures as Shaitan. He’s mentioned in the Book of Enoch as Satanael, the leader of the Grigori, or the Watchers… the so-called angels that became enamored with human women and came down to earth to mate with them. The ancient people of the South Pacific islands called him Dagon. The original Native Americans had a name for him too; I can’t pronounce it, and I can’t pronounce the name given to him by the ancient Europeans. Despite the different names within the different cultures, he’s the same thing.”

Vince’s mind was rebelling at the information. He tried to say something, tried to interject a word of reason, but he couldn’t.

“Hanbi’s name faded and died out as man evolved and developed a system of religion and government. In time, the religious scholars of the time took those old myths and assigned them to the evil spirit of the thing he spawned: Satan, Lucifer, Pazuzu, Behemoth, Melek Taus. The list goes on. Satan became the ultimate bogeyman for all the Abrahamic religions that sprouted up for one specific reason. To divert attention from Hanbi.”

“You’re not making sense,” Vince finally said.

“There’s a book called the Liber Daemonorum,” Frank continued. “I thought it was bullshit when I first stumbled on this thread. Thought it was a bunch of Lovecraft crap, but apparently even H. P. Lovecraft built his mythos and his fictional book The Necronomicon off the mythos of ancient Mesopotamian myth and legend. The Liber Daemonorum is the oldest and most rarest book on black magic ever compiled. There’s a French translation from 1328 or so, by Protassus, but it’s based on fragments from ancient Mesopotamia and Sumeria… in the ancient Sumer language as well as another language… one that is still unknown to modern man. The Liber Daemonorum is the most recent reference to Hanbi we have. Protassus claimed to have had access to older manuscripts, including one in Arabic, which had been translated from Sumerian. The Children of the Night… they went back there in ’65… went to Iraq and came back with ancient Sumerian artifacts. Those artifacts were probably those missing fragments!”

“This is crazy,” Vince said.

Frank coughed and Vince could sense he was struggling, but he continued on. “Long story, short, The Children of the Night have reached all the way back from beyond the Dark Ages. Yes, they’re descendants of the old Devil cults of medieval Europe, but they used their reach and their influence to locate a copy of the Liber Daemonorum and the missing Sumerian fragments. They used these to set things in motion… to bring Hanbi back into this world. And the only way to do that is through a half-demon half-human hybrid.” Frank’s voice became a parched croak. “You.”

“I thought you said I wasn’t the Anti-Christ!”

“And like I said, you’re not. Remember the soul-cracking your mother went through? You were the reason for that… to bring something through… so it would inject a bit of itself into the child that was growing in her womb.”

“Where’s Mike?” Vince asked.

“He’s dead,” Frank said. “They’re going to make it seem like he went crazy, raped and killed his granddaughter, then killed himself.”

“What?” Vince’s stomach plunged down an elevator shaft.

“Turn on the news. It’s already starting.”

Vince went into the living room and snatched the television remote. He turned on the TV, still talking to Frank. “What got you, Frank? How badly are you hurt?”

“Pretty fucking bad, buddy,” Frank wheezed.

Vince switched to a local news channel and for a moment was confused by what was on. He was watching a live feed from somewhere in Huntington Beach. A middle-aged woman with blond hair and pleasant features was weeping. “I never thought,” the woman sobbed, tears streaming down her face. “I never thought he’d be capable of this… of doing this to a little girl!”

The camera cut away to the newscaster in the studio who updated the viewing audience that a man authorities were identifying as Michael Peterson had killed himself by slicing his throat open with a broken mirror shard after killing his three-year old granddaughter. Vince gasped. “He what??”

“Don’t believe a word she says,” Frank said. “She did it. She orchestrated it. She was one of them the whole time and Mike never knew it.”

Mike’s wife Carol one of them? How was that possible? Had she been a cult member this whole time? A sort of sleeper-cell-like cult member waiting for the right time to obey the commands of the unknown shadowy figures of the organization? “What happened to you guys, Frank? Tell me.”

“We dropped everything off with Billy and went to Mike’s house to get… to get pictures of his kids,” Frank said, his voice wheezing. “We were going to disappear. Billy was going to help. But they beat us to it. They were at the house, waiting. They’d just performed a ritual and… something came out… something came out and ripped me open.”

“Listen to me,” Vince said. “Stay where you are, I’m coming to get you.”

“It came so fast,” Frank continued, babbling now. “It ripped me open and I laid there on the floor and watched as it possessed Mike, made him cut his throat and then… I don’t know how, but I got away. They were still performing the ritual as I crawled away. I saw the book… the Liber Daemonorum saw the words they’d written on the wall and that’s when I knew. I should have paid attention better! Should have… realized what they were up to.”

“Tell me where you are,” Vince begged. “I’m coming to get you.”

“Don’t let yourself be led to them, Vince. Don’t let them find you. They’ve got… something horrible in store… for…” Frank’s voice grew weak.

“What? What do they have in store for me?” Vince was agitated. Now he was on his feet, ready to go.

“Not for you…” Frank’s voice trailed to a weak whisper. “…the… world…”

“Frank?”

The hiss of an open line.

“Frank?”

With panic rising, he jabbed the hang-up button. His nervous system was on edge. He hesitated, frozen, not knowing what to do. Not knowing what he could do. The only thing he could think of doing was calling 911.

He hit the 911 button on his cellular, then Send. When the 911 Operator got on the line, Vince got right down to business. “I just got a call from a friend of mine who says he called me from a phone booth in Fountain Valley. He told me he was hurt, but before he could tell me exactly where he was, I lost the connection.”

The sound of fingers typing on a keyboard. “And your friend called you at this number?”

“Yes.”

“Is this a cell phone, sir?”

“Yes.”

“I can’t trace cell phone calls, sir, but one of our 911 operators just took a 911 call from somebody reporting an injured man lying in a phone booth on the corner of Brookhurst and Talbert.”

Vince checked his pockets to make sure his wallet was there, then headed outside, locking the door on the way out. He got in his car, keeping the phone to his ear as he started his car. “That’s it. He said he was hurt and that he was bleeding. Can you send—”

“We’re sending a unit right now,” the 911 operator said.

By the time Vince zoomed out of his cul-de-sac his heart was racing, and his mind was clouded with a thousand thoughts and images, all careening madly from the past and racing towards the present.