Black Light

by Patrick Melton, Marcus Dunstan, Stephen Romano

Genres: Horror; Suspense

Synopsis

The debut thriller by writers of the SAW movie franchise.

If you have a supernatural problem that won't go away, you need Buck Carlsbad: private eye, exorcist, and last resort.

Buck's got a way with spirits that no one else can match. He was normal, once. Until Something Horrible killed his parents and left him for dead.

Buck has spent years using his gift to trace his family. It's his only hope of finding out what happened to them-and what made him the way he is.

Now the voices say that something big is coming. Buck already knows what it is-a super high-tech bullet train running express across a stretch of unforgiving desert known for the most deadly paranormal events in history. A place where Buck almost died a few years ago, and where he swore he would never return.

But as the train prepares to rumble down the tracks, Buck knows it can only be the inevitable hand of fate pulling him back to the most harrowing unfinished case of his career at four hundred miles per hour.

Release date: October 5, 2011

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Print pages: 336

Sample

one

It always goes down hard when a dead guy takes his first swing at me. Like an invisible club coming out of the dark behind my eyes, landing in a million different places—places of the mind, places of the soul. I’ve been told I have a pretty mean soul, but I always flinch a little. You’d think I’d be used to it by now.

He’s tough, this son of a bitch.

He was a child killer when he was still alive. I can tell that right off. It’s the Terrible Thing that fuels his madness, makes him strong. It comes at me like a ripe smell of sulfur and smoldering ash, his last moments flashing in the thundering sonic boom of a bad heartbeat—and then I see his whole life, man. I take it on fast-forward, a quicktime superhighway of images, scenes, tiny little details flashing across the electrified chambers of my mind. I get it in just two seconds. It’s a lot to swallow. The moment is always terrifying.

Freefloaters, they’re always damn hard to pull.

You never know how tough they are until they’re right on top of you.

Usually, you have to go looking for them in places like this. These old Victorian houses are death traps. The nasty ones get in deep in all the nooks and crannies—there’s a million places to hide. But sometimes you get lucky. Sometimes they’re just cruising for a straight fight. Didn’t even need to call this one out, he’s just that crazy. Jumped me right in the middle of the room, saw me coming a mile away. Thinks he’s a real Billy Badass. Tough shit, Billy—I saw you coming too.

He was an altar boy in school, a four-letter football athlete in college. He could have gone pro but he became a cop instead. All the while living with his dark secret: the desire to smash something smaller than himself. So many years of madness and self-punishment and playing chess with his best friends and his family, who never knew the monster he really was. His final mistake. His own little boy. Psycho killers with families always screw up like that in the end. They get convinced they can be normal on the surface, but remain tortured by their desires until they finally give in, and it’s never pretty. I’ve seen the writhing lifescapes of at least a dozen like him. The trick is not to go too far when you pull a mark in. The trick is to use their own insanity against them.

See, it’s the crime, their most agonized moment—that’s what always brings these guys down. The moment when they finally fell, the moment when they lost everything, screaming that it just wasn’t fair, every regret and every lie and every damn one of those tormented secrets rising to the surface like sewage, hitting hard and blasting them off the earth—but not into death, not all the way. Every bad mark holds that Terrible Thing right out in front of them. If you’re like me, you see it superimposed on the world like a shimmering red serpentine coil, oozing and twisting and sluicing across everything else they possess, like a cancer. If you’re like me, you can reach out and grab it.

And if you’re like me…it burns.

Burns so deep you feel your whole body swell at the seams and threaten to blow right there.

But I hold him.

What’s inside me holds him.

The Pull.

I keep my feet planted on the floor now, allowing the energy of his own attack to ground me there. It’s an old-school martial arts technique—but it works, even when you’re fighting something that isn’t alive. I concentrate on the hard surfaces and familiar smells around my body, using them as an anchor to the world. The dusty living room, the antique furniture and ornate French doors. The sharp scent of old souls trapped in the carpet and the peeling wallpaper. The candles filling the air with ordinary magic—the false magic of men and faith, not ghosts and whispers. It armors me. Allows me to turn his own attack against him. Works every time.

I hear the desperate screech of his fractured mind do a midair whipcrack in the opposite direction, trying to resist the Pull.

But none of them can resist it.

I am a black hole and he is the light that cannot escape it.

I turn it on harder, feeling the burn as I get a grip on the twisting red ooze that flows through him. This always hurts the mark worse than it hurts me, even though it hurts me a whole goddamn lot, like ice daggers spiked with fire jamming into my eyes and my heart. The mark spits at me and curses, fighting dirty, kicking up a shockwave that shatters all the glass in the room, but I have him now, and he’s coming in hard, the way most spirits do when they try to possess you, connecting to your nervous system, taking control of your bones and mind, like a spider spinning up a fly.

But my Gift is to withstand that, to brush it aside.

Drink them down.

Kick their asses.

He screams all the way, the formless mist of madness and unsettled rage blasting apart and sleeting through the surface of my skin. In this one kinetic flashburn moment, everything he ever was—his life, his memories, his death in madness—it all goes into me.

My body shakes and rumbles as the mark plunges down deep.

Deeper.

And then…

Touchdown.

My whole body lights up from the lowest depth, coils of living energy dragracing my bloodstream. His rage scorches my mind, the desperate whine of a dying animal run through a feedback loop. I get it under control, bearing down hard, my teeth clenching.

He’s in my house now.

The scream fades to a rumble, then a low simmer, as the substance of his insanity fizzes and dissipates like acid seltzer. I feel it burst and become sour muck, oozing along the walls of my stomach and lungs, a living disease given terrible formless autonomy, still trying to scream its way out. It’s ingested now. Way down inside me.

This part is bad.

It’s the worst part of the job.

Then again, who said life—or death—was fair.

I glance at my watch and notice that I walked in here exactly three minutes ago. Just in time to crash the party. The woman is cringing in a far corner, near the fireplace, crying as she watches my body quake and rumble, my eyes jacked open, infused with the dull red glow of a madman’s cancer. All his hatred of her and his secrets and his terrible acts of violence—the things he did right here in this room and out there in the city, for years and years, and she never knew—it’s bouncing around in my guts like a pinball on fire, tearing me to pieces. It rips a month from my life in three seconds. Then another month. Then a year. Always a lot of damage when they’re so far down in the sickness.

But I still hold him.

He still oozes inside me.

I take a few deep breaths.

You’d think I’d be used to it by now.

 

The woman is still crying in the corner, but her eyes are full like saucers, the startled whites beaming at me, even through the flickering half-darkness. I see her face shimmer in the light from the candles, and she lets out a long sigh.

And that’s when the mark hits me again.

A sucker punch, right out of nowhere, deep in my guts.

I lose control for just a split second as the awful oozing cancer gets a grip on my mind. The world fritzes out…

And…

It spirals across my vision like an X-ray bathing the room in neon darkness. A dark so bright it blinds you. A glowing blade of white-hot laser light, peeling back the skin of reality to expose new layers. My scleral contact lenses keep the sudden shock from scorching me sightless, but the water in my eyes sizzles away fast. Didn’t see this coming. Have to pull back. Have to get him under control. Have to do it now…have to…

…but…

I see everything.

Everything the dead people see.

This is where they live.

It’s beautiful and terrifying, and all the answers I ever looked for are hovering right here in front of me in a sea of shadows.

It feels good.

It’s been so long.

It knew I would come back.

I smile in the Blacklight, feeling it rush into me.

I’m standing right where I was, in the same room, but the room is now revealed for what it really is. A flashing flipbook of half-images, all rushing in at once in a machinegun stutter. A million shapes swimming in translucent curtains, shadows of old lives, echoes of lost love and bad family business played out long ago. I see every story this old house ever witnessed. I see children giggling on the carpet in front of me. Toys spread out on the floor, which then turn into vases of flowers, and then I see the house built in reverse, the farmland it once stood on, and the years before that, all bathed in bright polarized shadows as the Blacklight shifts and pulses, taking me back in time, then forward again, ricocheting all over history, flickering images like changing channels on an old black-and-white television set. I stand here in this spot and see it all go down, and I can tell that it’s the mark’s madness forcing me to look at this—because he wants out. This is what dead people see on their side of the world, and he wants me to see it so I lose control of him.

But I’ve played this game before.

I know how to win it.

I ground myself again and bring myself back to the moment set before me. I concentrate on the room and it solidifies in ice-black glimmers, coming into sharp focus, so bright and so hot. I see the mark’s terrible crimes in the room. I see the candles transform into the knives he used to slit his own son’s throat. I see the razor wire and the rubber gloves and the bottles of ammonia appear on the coffee table, where he prepared his tools in the terrible hours before his final crime. I could reach out and bring that razor wire back with me if I wanted to, the same way I can pull marks. I’ve done it before. No one has ever been able to tell me why I can do it.

I even see the faint trace of the mark’s madness, floating in the air where it was just before I grabbed him, still hanging there, like the slime trail of a phantom slug.

The slime trail that allowed me to grab him in the first place.

I see it all.

It feels good.

Feels like I belong here.

It’s amazing and overwhelming and brighter than a million suns, hitting me hard…and I know I can use this…it will lead me to the truth…I want to stay here…it’s where I belong…it’s so beautiful…

No.

Get down, you bastard.

I will not have this fucking shit from you.

I go for the tiny pocketknife in my satchel, snick it open, and slide the sharp end along my little finger—just a tiny scrape. Enough to ping my system, to remind myself that I’m still human in this strange twilight of dead things. The pain shocks up my arm, overriding everything. The mark thrashes and screams and kicks me, but I have him cold now, and he has no choice but to retreat. And as be backs off…

The vision recedes and fades away.

The room is normal again.

My eyes still burn.

I reach up fast, and pull the lenses, toss them on the floor, where they melt like translucent slag. Damn. Those things are expensive.

That’ll teach me to forget my goggles.

I calm myself, measuring reality by the beating of my heart, making sure I’m still all here. Yeah. I’m still here.

And I win, you son of a bitch.

“Ma’am, your husband is gone. He won’t be giving you any more trouble.”

The woman shivers, and I think she says thank you, but it’s hard to tell. She didn’t see what I just saw. Nobody ever sees it but me. It’s enough to make a man feel really damn alone in a mighty cruel world.

She rises to her feet, throws herself into my arms, crying. I never have any idea what to do at times like this. Pulling marks ain’t easy, but it’s easier than a woman’s tears. So I tell her it’s okay, tell her she’s safe now. She smells like sweet things. I’m reminded of a hundred others like her. I’m reminded of things I can never have. I tell her it’s okay now. That’s all I can do.

The big man next to me puts his hand on my shoulder.

“Come on, Buck,” he says. “Why don’t you step outside? I’ll take it from here.”

two

That damn commercial plays again.

I try to ignore it again.

The urn sits on the bar in front of Tom, and I can almost see my face reflected in the silver surface. Almost, but not quite. Some kind of poetry in that, I guess.

The place is dank and greasy, the smell of stale beer and cigarettes wafting around like a roomful of drunk ghosts. Sometimes I can pick up on stuff that happened in rooms like this. Sometimes there’s marks here, just visiting. They never stay long in grungy nightspots. Bigger fish to fry in a town like New Orleans.

Tom pulls a sweaty envelope from his jacket pocket. Hands it to me and slides over the silver. “Here’s your cut. She was generous. Twelve large, plus the urn. Did you see her eyes back there? You prolly could’ve gotten lucky with that broad.”

“I don’t get lucky with clients.”

“She was a looker. I woulda done it.”

“You would have done a lot of things.”

“Yeah, I’m no Boy Scout. Not like you.” He rolls a grin at me when he says it, as if he’s telling me something I don’t already know. Loves to bust my balls when it comes to women, like I give a shit. His weird Italian voice sounds high and hardened, like Joe Pesci or some other tough guy in a gangster flick.

“Yeah, but you’re still one of the good guys,” I tell him, careful not to imitate his sleazy drawl. I do that sometimes, I think a lot of people do. You get around strange customers and you pick up on their inflections. Whenever I go out of town on jobs like this, people are amazed I don’t sound like some grim midnight cowboy from a trashy Western. That’s because I mostly do business out of Texas.

“I try not to think about good guys and bad guys,” he says, sipping his whiskey, watching me pocket the cash. “And you should count that, Buck.”

“I trust you.”

“You shouldn’t trust anyone, even your best friend.”

“I don’t have any friends.”

“Ain’t that sad? Years I’ve known you, Buck, and you don’t think I’m your friend?”

“You never call on my birthday.”

“I never call on anyone’s birthday.”

“Neither do I.”

“Then I guess we’re both scumbags after all.”

He finishes off his drink, orders another. Jim Beam Black on ice. Doesn’t ask if I want anything. He knows I don’t drink, and if you order club soda in a place like this, they look at you funny. The bartender goes through the motions, a silent black sentinel without pity in a houseful of dirty jazz.

I inspect the urn. Solid silver, not plated. Expensive. Haven’t seen one of these in a while. It reminds me of crazier times. I shut off the memories fast, looking at myself in the mirror across the bar.

A man turning old in a big hurry stares back at me.

My hair was black before I got in this business. Jet-black, the color of being young and reckless. It’s half-white now, in weird little streaks across the sides of my head. I noticed it the first time I ever got rid of a mark. One hair, shocked straight to hell by what I do. Gray is the color of something old and worn—not really alive, not quite dead enough. White is something else.

I figure one day soon, when I’ve asked all the questions I can ask, when I’ve looked through the Blacklight enough times, when I’ve found my mother and father and figured out why I can do this thing I do…well, maybe I’ll look like Edgar Winter or Andy Warhol or someone like that. It won’t matter. I’ll be in my grave by then.

Tom sees me staring at myself in the mirror, and he laughs. “Don’t kid yourself, kid. You look great.”

“I look like somebody dying.”

“You are somebody dying. But you still look good. Not a wrinkle on your face. Not an ugly old fuck like me.”

“You’re not ugly.”

“Says you.” He cracks a smile, makes a quick circle with his drink, searching for something. “You look like that guy…you know, that guy who played the cop in that fuckin’ movie. The one about the dirty Feds and the counterfeiters.”

“To Live and Die in LA?”

“Yeah, yeah that’s the one.”

“William Peterson. He was a good looking guy when he was young.”

“What’s he look like now?”

“Kind of like I feel.”

He shrugs, then belts the drink and stirs ice with his finger. “Well, you look like the young version, kid, even if you feel like shit. All cagy eyes and square jaw—and no wrinkles. I don’t get that. Guys in our line of work are supposed to get old and craggy fast. I’da thought you’d be thirty-eight going on sixty-nine by now.”

“Looks ain’t everything.”

“Must’ve made a deal with the devil, huh?”

“I don’t believe in the devil.”

“Maybe you should start.”

“Funny.”

He smiles, then almost laughs. Gives me a serious nod. “It’s all worth it, Buck. You did a good thing back there. That little lady, she went through hell this past year. Her man had some screws loose, but she never figured his goddamn ghost was gonna be around later to make it worse.”

“Nobody ever does.” I close my eyes and listen for the voice of the child killer—it’s still keeping its distance inside me, softer now since I kicked his ass.

He sighs, long and hard. “Man, I was on that case for three months, Buck. Tried everything to flush the bastard out. I was down to bone throwing—fucking bayou magic, man. It’s all for shit when you’re dealing with a real hard one. They live in the walls like cockroaches and laugh while you bust the place apart. There was a time I could’ve brought him down myself.”

That surprises me some.

Tom Romilda is still a respected name. Fifteen years on the streets of the Big Easy. He knows the lingo and all the parlor tricks, which is usually enough. He doesn’t have the Gift the way guys like me do, though. Tom’s good with the research end, computers and cop records and stuff like that—he’s a licensed private investigator with all the heat—but you have to bring in the heavy guns sometimes. The local dicks who work the Blacklight beat here are mostly crooks who talk a lot of voodoo bullshit. Tom ain’t like that. He makes sure the client is always happy, even if he has to lie about how he gets there. That’s why he used to be so successful. Knows it’s all about referrals in this business. He’s older now, but still respected. Probably just getting lazy.

“You really saved my ass this time,” he says, turning to me with one elbow on the bar. “Let me return the favor. Got something serious to talk about.”

I see where this is going already, and I don’t like it.

“Can’t pull two in a row, Tom. I’m out of practice.”

“So give it a rest. There’s no rush. You can crash at our place. Victoria would love to spoil you.”

Victoria’s his fifth wife. He goes through them like bad romance novels. The last one was an ex–Suicide Girl, arms covered in tattoos, heart made of stone. The one living in his house now is a twenty-seven-year-old Betty Homemaker with a nasty streak—she broke a lamp over his head last week while he was sleeping, then made him pancakes in the morning.

“Tom, I can’t.”

“C’mon, man, I know I threw you in blind this time but—”

“It’s not that. It’s not you. It’s this place.”

“At least hear me out.”

“No.”

I pull away from the mirror, settle back on the barstool, feeling the sticky fingers of the French Quarter pulling at my mind. This town has a vibe unlike anyplace else. I’ve been a lot of places, too. It tastes like swamplands and weird mojo tickling you somewhere deep and private, the gypsy scent of strange perfumes and incense teasing with the wistful afterburn of secrets you’d really rather not know about. And the food. That’s the thing about the Quarter anyone can pick up on, not just guys like me. The smell of backwoods banquets wafting through the street, hickory smoked and Cajun fried. It’s almost enough to distract you from the limitless evil that lives here.

I run my finger along the silver surface of the urn. It has holy crosses carved into the side, etchings of Jesus and Mary. A joke, really.

The remains of the child killer grumble in my stomach.

“I just wanna get back to my hotel room, Tom. Get this Billy Badass out of my guts. One goddamn problem at a time, man.”

“You should make it easier on yourself. Sit here and get drunk like the rest of us. You’ll be yodeling down the big porcelain megaphone in no time.”

“If I got sauced every time I needed to get rid of a mark, I would have gone belly-up a long time ago.”

“Fine, have it your way. But you really oughta listen to an old man when he’s handing out free advice—even if he is an ugly drunk.”

“I handle my own problems my own way.”

Above the mirror, the battered flat-screen plays that same damn commercial that’s run four times since I stepped into this place.

And I can’t look away from it, just like before.

 

“Welcome to the future,” says the TV, showing off a world of dreamlight. The spot is state-of-the-art filmmaking and digital-video trickery, and the voice is excited and young, announcing the opening of a new multimillion-dollar playground in Vegas. Everyone knows about it. Been on every channel for the last six weeks.

I’ve known about it for a lot longer than that.

“The Dreamworld Casino and Theme Park! A whole new planet of entertainment and adventure! A galaxy of wonderment in the center of the universe!”

If you’ve ever been to places like Universal City or even Disney World, you sort of start to get the idea—shopping malls mated with movie theaters dotted among terrifying mile-in-the-sky amusement rides, all rushing to be consumed by causeway levels, all brimming with studded marquees and twists of sculpted light more dazzling than the gilded gates of Neverland.

But it’s always the second part of this commercial that gets me.

Like the sharp stab of a dull memory in the pit of your stomach, reminding you to turn away, but you can’t.

“And there’s just one way to reach the center of the universe! On the Laser!”

A series of fast cuts and super-hip screen-wipe effects show me the bullet: a sleek steel serpent slashing through the desert. The fastest high-speed luxury rail train ever built.

I want to forget that it exists.

“From downtown Los Angeles to the heart of Las Vegas, with speed and style to spare! The ultimate VIP travel-entertainment experience! The Jaeger Laser! Punch it into hyperspace for the thrill ride of a lifetime—all the way to the Dreamworld!”

I look away from the television, as the hard-sell powers down and it goes back to some sit-com. The bartender reaches up with the remote, thumbing the canned laughter into oblivion, replacing it with a news channel.

“The Jaeger Laser,” I say to no one in particular. “Fucking ridiculous name.”

The big man next to me lets out a sharp huff, his eyes still on the screen above us. “I guess it’s true what they say—the past always bites you in the ass just when you think you’re done with it.”

Asshole.

He should know better, tossing it in my face like that.

I shake my head. “I am done with it.”

“Bullshit. You’ve had your eyes glued to that TV since we came in here.”

“Ain’t got nothing to do with me anymore.”

“I know you don’t really believe that, Buck. You’ve got serious history with that train.”

He’s going somewhere with this too.

And I still don’t like it.

“Tom…whatever you have in mind, just forget it. The last time I went out there, I got somebody killed. Somebody innocent.”

“I know all about shit like that. Before you were even born, I was knee-deep in a place where killing children was government sponsored.”

“I’m not like you, Tom. I don’t kill people. I don’t kill kids. I don’t care who’s sponsoring me.”

His jagged smile splits his face like a jack-o’-lantern with a dirty secret. “What if I told you I could get you sponsored by the guys who are running that train? Right now. Tonight.”

Something turns cold in the air, and I smell the hard grime of dead things in my past, the Walkers in the slipstream whispering something just on the edge of hearing. They just did a little dance on my grave.

I look at him hard. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about the big one, Buck.”

He points at the TV screen, as the commercial starts up again.

The fastest train in the world, running to the center of the universe.

Running straight through my past.

“They’re looking for you,” he says. “There’s something going on and they want you on the team.”

“That’s…impossible.”

“Believe it, kid. They called me. I got you up here so we could have a man-to-man about it.”

“I only came here because I needed the money.”

“Don’t kid yourself, kid. You came because you’re still hungry to look across. You’re still looking for your folks. This deal I’m handing you now could put you right at ground zero. It’s just like you always said: there are no coincidences.”

His words sting me.

It always stings when it’s true.

I shake my head on auto-pilot, starting to feel the seriousness of his words sink in, the dull panic of everything that made me desperate so long ago washing up in bitter waves. “I don’t want it anymore. I can’t go back there.”

“You could at least hear what they have to say.”

“I said no, Tom. It’s over for me. They can ride their fancy rail line straight to hell for all I care. Whatever happens, it ain’t gonna have anything to do with me. And I’ve got things to do.”

I grab the silver urn and get up from the bar stool.

He puts up his hand, palm out. “Okay, okay, I’m sorry. We’re still cool, right? I mean, the money’s fine and everything?”

I roll my eyes. “Money’s great. Go fuck yourself.”

He laughs. “Look, do yourself a favor, man. Just think about this one.” He slides a small slab of embossed-foil paper across the bar to me with one finger. A business card. “Think about it real hard, Buck.”

The card reads in big letters:

JAEGER INDUSTRIES

And there’s a phone number.

I take the card and pocket it, give him a shrug. He knows I’ll be back. Even says so, with that big filthy grin of his.

You’ll be back, Buck.

Story of my life.

Loose ends and bad ghosts, all hanging at the edge of oblivion.

All waiting for me.

I shake his hand and he leans in and grabs my shoulder. He squeezes tight, winks at me through a leathery road map of wrinkles and says I just need a good woman, like that’s his solution for everything. Like it ever really works for him.

A woman.

They say women are life’s great mystery, but I know better.

There’s lots of other mysteries out there.

Like the one that’s hovered over me in dark neon riddles since the day I found out what I am. The one that’s coming back on me now, while the mark sizzles and burns from the inside, boiling against my organs and blood and who knows what else.

I stuff the urn in my satchel and leave the bar, drifting out into the steaming summer night, the cobblestones of ancient French streets under my feet like grave markers, vibrating with the frequencies of the dead.

 

I walk right past my cheap room on Royal Street.

Head straight for my truck.

Change of plans.

I have to get home, and I have to keep Billy Badass inside me while I do it. Have to drive all night with the remains of a child killer cursing me, just like in the old days. All the way back to Austin from the worst city on earth.

I have to.

Tom was right—I came here to help because I wanted to look across again. But I didn’t know what I was really looking for until just now.

What he told me back there changes the game.

And there’s only one place on earth I can go to know for sure.

And one place beyond earth.

Have to get back there, fast.

The mark rumbles, sensing my panic, wanting out. The buzz always turns into sickness when you keep it in too long. I force it down with sheer will, taking an anxious shortcut through a back alley.

 

They followed me three blocks before they made their move.

I was hoping they’d see my truck and give up—it’s ten years old and beat to shit, makes me look like poor white trash. But no such luck. The smaller one steps forward with his arms crossed and his chest puffed out like some skinny lizard. The fat one points at the big leather satchel strapped across my chest and lays down the law:

“We’ll take your bag, man.”

The child killer senses the threat and smells their blood, its wordless voice rumbling like sour backwash up into my throat. I tell it to stay down.

They’re a couple of dim ratfaces in greasy wifebeaters and shredded cargo pants, half defined in streetlamp shadows, like ghosts wearing flesh. But they aren’t ghosts—they’re not even armed, not with anything but raw knuckles and deep scars across their lips, telling tales of juvenile prison and bad fathers. They’re still in their l. . .