“He’s scared shitless of our master,” Karney added. “Always has been.”
Essie’s hand dropped to Peter’s gun hand and held it delicately, mother-hen-like. Peter was in pain, but had come to accept the warped reality confronting him in his house. Perhaps he imagined that he was still upstairs, Essie peacefully asleep at his side as he moaned and tossed his way through this nightmare. Gritting his teeth, he lifted the carving knife off the stairs and held it under Essie’s chin. “Keep away from my family.”
“Oh my, no,” Essie spat. “Hell no. You use me, have your fun with me, lock me out—now you want to gouge me like that little bitch gouged me?” With her free hand, she yanked down on her neckline, exposing her left breast and the deep, red gash of the wound beneath. “My dearly departed momma warned me about dating lawyers.” She gave Peter’s broken wrist a squeeze and he yelped in pain. “‘All they’ll want to do is screw you. One way or the other.’”
The razor point of the blade shook under her chin. “What are you?” Peter asked. Pleaded.
Essie clamped down harder on the broken bone and Peter screamed. “Essie, God!”
The knife fell away.
She grinned and seized his wrist with both hands, squeezing, squeezing. “No!” Clay shouted, just before the bloodcurdling crunch. Peter’s forearm collapsed under the pressure. His body shuddered and his eyes rolled up to whites.
“Yes! Do the same to his throat!” Karney screamed. “Make his hot-shit son watch!”
And Essie tilted Peter’s head back, started to go for the exposed Adam’s apple.
But she was interrupted by guitar strings.
When Essie had shoved him aside, Clay assumed she would continue her onslaught, and he had pawed at and lifted the Rickenbacker’s case to put something between them. Except Essie had beelined for Peter, blinded by her rage, and Karney seemed content to stand back and bask in her violence. That was when Boyle had spoken up, whispering close to Clay’s ear: There’s a better way to fight them.
And Clay did as he instructed, popping the case and removing the guitar—repaired and intact now, the fire-glow paint more vibrant than ever. Don’t draw attention to yourself, Boyle warned, but as Clay strapped the Rick on, he’d witnessed his father’s pain-racked face, Essie crushing his bones to powder, and he’d rushed forward, meaning to swing the stringed axe like a literal ax. Instead, he struck an invisible force halfway across the foyer—Boyle, standing between him and the staircase. Play something, he said. Something repetitive.
Clay took a step back and strummed the strings, praying they were in tune. They were, sort of, and their twang drew Essie immediately off his father.
Quickly!
Backing up, Clay finger-picked the strings, playing the three open notes that had lured him to the Generator at the start of all this. Thrum-Tum-Tee… Tee-Tum-Thrum…
Essie stared over at Karney, and he back at her.
Boyle moved alongside Clay. The ghosts that intrude here, he sang, picking up the rhythm, bring no malice or fear here. The ghosts that intrude here bring no malice or fear here. The ghosts that intrude here—
“—bring no malice or fear here,” Clay crooned. “The ghosts that intrude here…”
His attackers looked suddenly off-put, helpless against this simple incantation. Music soothes the savage beast, Boyle reminded him.
Clay walked backward so he didn’t have to turn his eyes from the dead intruders. They matched him step for step like trained monkeys on a leash.
“The ghosts that intrude here…”
Take them outside. The tool shed burnt with the Generator, but a bunch of tools survived. They’re piled in the yard. There’s a battery-powered chainsaw….
Clay weighed theimplication of such a statement. How long would it take to drop the guitar and gather a chainsaw? Would Boyle take over playing? Or would he lift the disembodied saw and give the starter a yank for him? Chanting, Clay didn’t have the luxury to ask.
As he Pied-Pipered Karney and Essie forward, Boyle slide the kitchen table away from the back door with a screech. “The ghosts that intrude here bring no malice or fear here…” Another backward step. Another. Almost out of the house. “The ghosts that intrude—”
“What the unGodly fuck?” Back down the hall, William Priest had appeared, his face purple with rage. “Is everyone hypnotized by this asshole?”
Essie managed to snap out of it first, plugging her fingers knuckle-deep into her ears and shaking the incantation out of her head. Karney, more susceptible to a good tune, followed Clay’s lead for another few paces until Essie plugged his ears—no lobes anymore, just holes. Shit, Boyle said.
The spell broken, Karney and Essie stared guiltily back at Priest. “Well?!” Priest shouted, so loud his voice broke. “Get the motherfucker!”
Clay quit playing and unstrapped the Rick. “A little help here, Roc.”
Okay, here goes, Boyle’s footsteps thudded against the floor, charging directly at Davis Karney. And the burnt man was struck by Boyle’s unseen force, the same way Boyle had once struck Clay, trying to leap into him. Only this time, the outcome was different. For a moment, Karney was jerking and spasming like a man who’d stepped on a power line. Then he was still again, his single eye blinking. He lifted his skeletal hand and regarded it, as if for the first time.
Essie snarled and started for Clay—and Karney seized her by her feral hair, bringing her to a cold stop, her long nails inches from Clay’s face. “What the fuck are you doing?” she hissed.
“The orders changed,” Davis Karney said. In Rocco Boyle’s voice. He tossed a skeletal finger at Priest. “Now we’re gonna kill that son of a bitch, and fast before he scurries off.”
“You’re not Karney,” Essie realized. “You’re—”
“The ghostly prick you’ve been tryin’ to talk to,” Boyle replied.
Essie went for him, but Boyle/Karney still had her by the hair and he heaved her down the hall with such force that Priest had to dodge her sliding, tumbling body. Boyle regarded the hair that had ripped from her scalp—so much of it, he appeared to
