Resurrection House by James Chambers Page B

such as me, unwanted by my own kind, unsuited for the one being I ever loved. What sacrifice could I possibly make to win his favor?
    I bellow over the rumbling surf.
    Dark shapes rise among the swells. Deformed heads mounted by bulbous eyes pierce the surface. Massive webbed hands guide them forward. Slender gray fins protrude from the hulking backs of horrible creatures Lynna called her Deep Ones, her family, her kind. I drop to my knees beside Lynna’s lifeless body and beg forgiveness, crying out for them to restore Lynna, praying to the unknowable god that rules them.
    They circle me. One among them steps forward, fat and squishing, vaguely familiar, its shoulders bent with anger. It points at me with one monstrous hand, adorned by a ring I have seen before, the twin of that which Lynna showed me, the pearl that had adorned her grandmother’s hand.
    Her eyes, like Lynna’s were, are deep, rolling abysses. They are unforgiving. They are cold, cruel, and inhuman. After all, Lynna’s grandmother never did approve of our relationship, but hoped I would help her granddaughter get something out of her system.
    “I have nowhere left to run,” I say. “Like you once did. Like Lynna.”
    The circle tightens around me. I am an interloper. I am different than them.
    “I’m so sorry. I didn’t understand. I only wanted someone to be with.”
    I remember Lynna’s room on that gloom-soaked afternoon, the way the cold rain washed across its windows, and how Lynna’s smooth warmth felt pressed against me. I no longer deserve such a memory, but still I try to lock it in place, to live in that moment.
    A clammy hand wraps around my throat. Others join it, I feel myself dragged onto the wet sand, into the surf, and a cold black world welcomes me.

Resurrection House
    Of 19,453 prospective buyers Red Moriarty chose Peter Carroll to purchase the notorious property at 1379 Hopewood Boulevard, better known as “Resurrection House.”
    No one was more surprised than Peter.
    Carroll only met Red at the closing when the great man swept into the office, trailing a team of assistants and lawyers in his draft. For a man said to be in his eighties Red got around like an athletic fifty year old, his body commanded by a mind still sharp and facile. He moved with the effortless superiority and inbred poise of royalty, the unspoken assurance that all in his path belonged to him or could be made to belong to him should he only desire it. Moriarty’s presence transformed the powerful, wealthy men he employed, powerbrokers hated and feared by those with whom they did business, into fawning children, who shrank from his gaze.
    But not so Peter Carroll.
    From the moment he met him Peter felt something akin to warmth and paternal affinity from Red, even as the man used his ethereal blue eyes to pick him apart from across the table.
    Satisfied, Moriarty sported Peter a wink. “Wondering what you’ve gotten yourself into, Mr. Carroll?” he said.
    “Well,” said Peter. “It is a…a big day, isn’t it?”
    “Did you know that your offer was the third lowest one I received?”
    “Oh.” Peter hadn’t thought it had been that bad. “It’s really all I could muster. It’s my life savings.”
    “Hmmm,” Moriarty said, reducing the sum of Peter’s efforts to less than words.
    The lawyers shuffled papers past Peter like tag-team blackjack dealers. He signed each one, some more than once, his wrist growing numb and his fingertips tingling. The incessant explanatory chatter rattled on too fast for Peter to assemble the details. He would sort it all out later. He was determined now to forge ahead, the course of his life plotted and fixed after so many years of aimlessness.
    The paperwork took nearly an hour to be done, and then the room fell quiet except for Moriarty’s soft voice speaking German into his cell phone. Peter gazed out the window while they waited. Swaying green leaves caressed the vacant blue sky, and he thought of his new home