The Widening Gyre Read online

  *

  An off-duty police officer who had stopped to make a quick withdrawal calmly contemplated his next move as he lay on the bank’s cold marble floor. As was his habit, he was armed. He noticed the smaller man held a pistol, and the larger man had a shotgun. A shotgun in close quarters was a real problem, so he would take the larger man first. A head shot would be best, since shots to the body would leave the big man time to react before he went down. He would deal with the smaller man in the back as best he could, but the big guy had to go first.

  There would be a moment, an opening.

  There always was.

  Jenna and Timmy were five feet from the bank entrance.

  *

  Mitch set two sundaes on the table and happened to glance outside as he went back to the counter for the third.

  He saw Jenna open the glass door and stop in her tracks halfway through the entrance. The door swung partway closed, resting against her back.

  Timmy looked up at his mother. Jenna pulled him close.

  Jenna glanced back toward the ice cream shop. Toward him.

  Her face had no expression. Blank.

  An alarm screamed in his head. Something was wrong.

  A man in a ski mask pulled Jenna into the bank, with Timmy clasping tightly to her hand. The entrance swung closed.

  Mitch’s blood ran cold. He moved quickly.

  *

  Cole grabbed the woman by the arm and violently swung her into the lobby.

  Jenna stumbled across the marble floor as she desperately tried to keep her balance and hold on to her son.

  “On the floor, now,” Cole shouted.

  This was the distraction, the opening. The off-duty cop swiftly reached behind, lifted his shirt, and drew his weapon from the concealed holster tucked into the back of his pants. He rose to a crouching position, right hand cupped in left, smooth and deliberate. He aimed.

  Cole detected motion out of the corner of his eye. He instinctively swung his shotgun toward it.

  A loud crack rang out in the bank lobby. A customer screamed.

  The cop’s 9mm round slammed into Cole’s shoulder, small splatters of blood marking the left side of his face. He was rocked back by the impact, grunting loudly as the bullet’s kinetic energy knocked the breath from his lungs. The shotgun swung away from its intended target. Cole’s finger reflexively squeezed the trigger.

  A thunderous roar filled the lobby. Twelve-gauge steel shot exploded from the short barrel.

  Timmy Bannock died instantly, cruelly torn from his mother’s protective grasp by the powerful shotgun blast.

  Jenna’s left leg was shredded by steel pellets, but the only pain she felt was from her heart breaking. Before she hit the floor, she already knew her baby boy was dead.

  *

  Mitch screamed at the shop clerk to call 911 and was halfway across the street when he heard one, then two gunshots. He knew the first shot had been a small-caliber weapon, the second from something larger. His heart crawled into his throat. No, no, please, God, no. He heard two more shots before he reached the bank’s entrance.

  *

  Vic emerged from the back of the bank just as his brother went down. “Cole, no!” This wasn’t supposed to happen.

  Startled by the shotgun blast, and distracted by what had happened to the woman and child, the cop lost his concentration for an instant, long enough to spoil his aim. Another loud crack. His second shot hit the big man square in the chest.

  Cole slumped to the floor, mortally wounded. But not dead yet. He raised his gun toward the shooter and fired. The roar from the shotgun was deafening.

  The cop wheeled backward, curling into a fetal position as he died.

  Vic stood frozen in place, gun in hand, watching his older brother slump over on the floor, his eyes open but sightless.

  For the first time in his life, Vic was alone. Truly alone. None of this was supposed to happen. No one was supposed to die. They would be in and out quickly, money in hand, with Mexico just a couple of days away. It was Cole’s plan, and Cole was always right. Always.

  Vic looked around the bank, saw the people cowering on the floor. Some were sobbing, others staring right at him.

  He didn’t know what to do.

  He would go to prison this time. People had died here, and he’d been a part of it. He stared at his pistol, gripped tightly in his shaking hand, and wanted to throw it away, toss it to the floor and run.

  Maybe he could get away, make it to Mexico by himself. He had the money.

  But he couldn’t leave his brother on the floor like that.

  Damn them. Damn them all. This wasn’t fair.

  The rush he felt was surprising, sudden, forceful enough that he took a quick breath. And just like that, he was no longer afraid.

  He glanced at his brother again and felt no sadness. Cole was dead because he let himself get shot. He was careless and stupid.

  Vic felt strong now, confident. It was as if a part of himself he’d never known existed had suddenly been unleashed.

  No, life wasn’t fair. It sucked. And all these people, crying and pissing themselves on the floor, were part of the reason. Them, with all their nice things, all their money, laughing at him, holding him down . . . but not anymore.

  He’d get away from this. No sweat. But first, these people were going to pay.

  Vic turned toward the bank employee who had been with him in the back. “I could swear I just heard you stutter again,” Vic said, grinning. The man closed his eyes, a high-pitched “nnn” sound seeping through clenched teeth as Vic fired.

  The employee fell back, his face a reddish blob.

  It was the first time Vic had killed another human being. And he liked it.

  That’s right, kill them. Kill them all.

  People began to scream again, some crawling away, wanting to find a place to hide. Vic thought it was a beautiful sight. He smiled as he walked from the teller line toward the lobby floor. There were no hiding places here.

  All of them, Vic. Kill them.

  It was payback time.

  *

  Mitch slammed through the bank entrance, and stopped cold.

  There was blood everywhere. People were screaming, scrambling across the floor. Terrified.

  He saw his son. Facedown.

  He saw his wife. Hurt, but still alive. Though wounded, Jenna raised herself from the floor, her face twisted by pain and by fury, as she tore her eyes away from Timmy and spied the shotgun. She looked at Mitch quickly, her eyes so full of pain, then reached for the gun.

  “Jenna, no, stay down,” Mitch screamed. He ran toward her, but it was too late.

  From across the lobby, another man coolly raised his pistol, took aim, and fired.

  *

  At the instant he pulled the trigger, Vic noticed the woman he was firing at was pregnant, but he didn’t care. He kept pulling the trigger. Again, again, and again. The lobby echoed with the sharp reports from the pistol, small brass casings tink tinking as they hit the floor, bouncing about his feet.

  Vic didn’t know their names, but the evil squirming inside him did. His first shot killed Jenna Bannock. As she fell, his second and third shots murdered her unborn child. His fourth and fifth shots hit Mitch Bannock, who collapsed next to his wife’s lifeless body, facing her.

  Vic emptied his entire magazine.

  The power he felt was overwhelming. He decided who lived, he decided who died. He was a god. He went through two more magazines before ending his killing spree, casually walking among the terrified bank patrons and murdering them where they lay.

  *

  As his life slipped away, Mitch stared into Jenna’s open eyes. The light was gone, but he knew he would see her again.

  The man with the pistol stood over both of them, laughing as he removed his ski mask.

  Mitch looked into the face of the monster who’d murdered his wife, as the killer leveled the pistol at his head. But this was no man, not entirely. Behind his
cold, unfeeling eyes something inhuman churned, almost as old as time itself and seething with an ancient hatred.

  At that final moment all was revealed. Mitch understood who, and what, he’d been. What Jenna had been. What had almost come to be, and what was still to come. There would be others.

  In a voice not entirely his own, the man said, “It ends here, Chosen.”

  No, Mitch thought, as he defiantly smiled at his murderer. It’s only beginning.

  Then Vic pulled the trigger.

  Outside, on the sidewalk beneath the clock tower, a large black bird lay dead.

  *

  Twenty years had passed since the bloody day in Twin Creek.

  The detectives working the case were baffled by their inability to track the killer. Vic Davol had seemingly vanished into thin air. Any tips they received—and there weren’t many—consistently led to nothing but dead ends. No hard leads, no sightings, no anything. After nearly two decades, the case was certifiably cold. A mass murder—including an entire family—was reduced to nothing more than a cardboard box on a shelf and a fading most-wanted poster in the post office.

  During that time, life continued. The dead were buried and forgotten, and the world went on its merry way, oblivious to what had really happened. The killings in Twin Creek had been only the start of a gradual, insidious descent.

  A balance of power had shifted.

  And from that day forward, the world began to unravel.

  PART II

  THE AWAKENING

  3

  Present Day

  Zach Regan tossed his head from side to side, kicked his legs, and grabbed at the sheets. His sleeping mouth shaped silent words. No, I don’t know who you are, leave me alone! Over the last three weeks, the night terrors that had tormented his childhood had returned. The old dream was back. I don’t know you, get out of my head!

  Zach woke with a start, his heart hammering away in his chest. The bedsheets were cold, soaked with sweat. His hair was plastered to his forehead, tight curls stuck to his skin by perspiration.

  A knock on his bedroom door. “Zach, are you awake?” His mother.

  Zach sat up in bed and tried to straighten the sheets. He wiped the sweat away with his palm, and calmed himself enough to answer. “Yeah. I’m awake.”

  Linda Regan poked her head through the door, still dressed in her nightgown and bathrobe. “I’ve got pancakes ready downstairs if you want some, so—” She stopped in mid-sentence. For an instant, her face had “the look” that Zach had seen for most of his life; worry, apprehension—and after he hurt himself—dread. Fleeting, but he saw it.

  Linda’s eyes narrowed, just a little. “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “I’m fine, Ma,” Zach said, rubbing his eyes. “I’ll be down in a minute.”

  “Okay,” Linda replied, her face a blank slate. “Hurry up before your dad eats them all.” She forced a smile, and gently closed his bedroom door.

  A few seconds passed before Zach heard her footsteps head down the hall toward the stairs.

  “Dammit,” he muttered. She would go downstairs, tell his dad what she saw, and then the questions would start.

  Zach swung his legs over the side of his bed and scratched at the white, thickened knots of skin on each of his wrists. His scars always itched.

  *

  Linda stood at the top of the stairs, one hand covering her mouth to muffle the sob rising in her throat, and the other gripping the banister to steady herself. Seeing Zach like this, skin pale and slick with sweat, his bedsheets tangled in a knot, and a dull, exhausted look in his eyes, opened a door to a time she hoped was gone for good.

  Even at an early age, Zach never slept through the night. He’d wake screaming, sometimes three or four times a night, terrified.

  Of his dreams.

  The thing in his dreams.

  The doctors turned to drugs to control what they said was borderline schizophrenia. The medicinal blanket they threw on Zach’s fire smoldered for a few years, the smoke rising in a wispy drug-induced haze, but it eventually started to burn . . . only at the edges at first, but the flames slowly spread toward the center. There were more doctors, more pills, but Zach continued to suffer. The drugs never made the thing go away.

  They nearly lost him on a dark September night seven short years ago, finding him on the bathroom floor with a bloody razor in his hand. Stitches healed his slashed wrists, and the drugs and counseling eventually allowed Zach to return home and go back to school. Even the dreams went away. In time, the drugs went away, too.

  The move from Kearney to Omaha seemed to do some good. Zach graduated high school and was holding down a steady job. All the bad times for Zach, and for their family, were behind them. Or so it seemed.

  After Zach’s suicide attempt, one doctor explained that like the famous clumsy egg that fell off the wall, an egg once broken can never really be fixed. You can glue the shell back together, and maybe paint the cracks so they won’t show, but it’s still broken. You can still see the cracks, from the inside.

  Bottom line, they were going to have to watch Zach. Closely.

  And now, Linda feared, the dreams might be back. She’d seen the same look on his face so many times before, and the thought of reliving those years scared her deeply.

  *

  Zach walked to the bathroom and stared at his face in the mirror. His eyes were a deep, clear green, the same Irish eyes as his father, but this morning they were bloodshot from enduring troubled sleep. His skin was pale, his lips thin and dry. The strain from the last three weeks was showing.

  He was older now, but the terror he felt was no less real than when he’d been a scared, confused little boy who grabbed a box cutter from the garage and tried to escape the only way he knew how. He’d come a long way since that day, no longer relying on doctors and pills. He was going to college, had a job, everything was looking up. Even his sisters had stopped treating him like he was different, always afraid to say the wrong thing in fear of sending him on some sort of downward spiral.

  They had all stopped worrying. Finally.

  And then, inexplicably, it started again. The same terrifying dream, more real than real life in some ways, playing itself out, night after night for the past three weeks, just as it had when he was a child.

  They called him schizophrenic then, but the doctors were wrong. It was not a mental disorder, nor was it simply a dream. Something that had tormented him as a child had been suppressed—for good, he thought—but it had once again caught his scent.

  It came to him at night, behind closed eyes. The thing was back.

  Zach splashed cold water on his face and ran a towel through his matted hair. He put two drops of Visine into each eye, wincing at the burn. “One day at a time, Zach. Take it one day at a time,” he said, but his words weren’t very convincing. He was scared.

  Zach dressed for work and headed downstairs for breakfast, stopping at the bottom of the stairs when he heard his parents’ voices.

  “I don’t know what to think. He looked—” His mom didn’t finish her sentence, but Zach knew what she was trying to say. He looked just like before.

  “It’s probably nothing,” his dad said.

  “I’m scared, Tom.”

  “I know, Lindy. I’m scared, too. But look how far he’s come. He’s doing well in school, holding down a part-time job. He’s a world away from where he was a few years ago.”

  Zach couldn’t blame his parents for worrying. Finding their son curled up on the bathroom floor with a razor in his hand had surely given them reason.

  Zach walked into the kitchen, not wanting to eavesdrop any further. “Morning, Dad,” he said.

  His parents both abruptly sat back from the table, like two kids caught passing a note in school. “Mornin’ son,” his dad said, grabbing the newspaper and pretending he was in the middle of reading it.

  His mom stood up and stepped to the stove. “How many pancakes do you want?”

  “
Three or four, please,” Zach replied. “Thanks, Mom.” He poured himself a cup of coffee. Even though his back was turned, he knew his parents were exchanging glances, wondering if they should say something. He decided to speak first. “I slept like crap last night.”

  Neither one of them replied.

  “Sausage and jalapeño pizza,” Zach continued. “My stomach was killing me at about four this morning.” He wasn’t telling them the entire truth, but he wasn’t lying, either. He could almost feel the tension in the room fade a little. He sat down at the table and grabbed the front page.

  He scanned the headlines for a moment, then put the paper down. It was the same stories, every day. People slaughtering each other for the sake of religion, for money, land, because of different skin colors, and sometimes, it seemed, for no reason at all. Disasters around the globe, earthquakes on every continent, floods, disease outbreaks, and the list went on and on. Death, even on a grand scale, was becoming the new normal.

  Linda placed a plate of steaming pancakes in front of him, dripping with butter and maple syrup.

  “These look great, Mom.”

  Zach ate his breakfast while his parents sipped their coffee and looked at each other across the table, their eyes communicating what they wanted to say to each other as soon as he left for work.

  Zach knew they were worried.

  And so was he.

  4

  Zach had worked part-time at Kayman’s Drug for about a year, working his way up to almost thirty hours a week, which meant he was at Kayman’s when not in class. Staying busy helped him focus on the positives. Or it used to, until recently.

  He slammed his car door and walked toward the store, taking inventory of the cars parked in the lot. The dented Festiva belonged to Cora Hastings, one of the assistant managers. She was thirty-six, divorced, and trying to ditch a twenty-year smoking habit while learning how to date again. Cora had her moods, and they could swing.

  The old Chevy pickup belonged to Randy York, a senior at Omaha East High School. Randy played sports—played the girls, too—and was one of the lucky ones who would make it through high school without needing a therapist later in life.