The Calling Read online

  When eighteen-year-old Christopher Myers’ parents are murdered, something is written on his bedroom door, a mark in his parents’ blood that convinces the police the killer has targeted Christopher as the next victim. To keep him safe, he travels away with his estranged grandmother and uncle to the small town of Bridgton, New York. And it’s in Bridgton that he meets an extraordinary young man who has come with his father to stop an unrelenting evil. Soon Christopher learns of the town’s deep dark secret, and how his parents’ murder was no accident, and how he has been brought to Bridgton by forces beyond his power—forces that just may threaten the destruction of all mankind.

  “The Calling is a powerful, gripping and terrifying novel, the sort that possesses your whole life while you’re reading it; it’ll stalk you through the day, and inform your dreams. Swartwood has delivered a novel that will become a classic.”

  — Tim Lebbon

  “Robert Swartwood’s The Calling is a diabolical rocket sled of a psychological thriller. Told through the vivid, almost druggy point of view of a young man on the edge, tangled in a web of tragedy and surreal horror, Swartwood’s novel gets under the skin and stays there. Highly recommended.”

  — Jay Bonansinga

  THE CALLING

  Robert Swartwood

  Contents

  THE CALLING

  About the Author

  Excerpt from SPOOKY NOOK

  Excerpt from THE MAN ON THE BENCH

  Also by Robert Swartwood

  Copyright

  THE CALLING

  Author’s Note

  While many of the places and locations mentioned within this novel are real, the towns of Lanton, Pennsylvania, and Bridgton, New York, and their inhabitants, exist wholly in the author’s imagination, and any resemblance between the people who live there and people who live in the real world is coincidental and unintended.

  For my parents

  Who in the rainbow can show the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colors, but when exactly does the one first blindingly enter into the other? So with sanity and insanity.

  —Herman Melville,

  Billy Budd

  Prologue

  Life isn’t fair.

  It’s an old adage, a tired cliché, but you know this to be true. You’ve known it all your life, ever since you were a boy.

  Like when you were forced to eat all your Brussels sprouts before being allowed to leave the dinner table. Or when you twisted your ankle on the first day of middle school practice and couldn’t play soccer for the rest of the season. Or when you asked Lydia Mynell out and she said no and then avoided you for the next two weeks, which you later admitted was a pretty impressive feat in itself as your lockers stood side by side.

  Life isn’t fair, but who said it would be?

  Your parents certainly didn’t.

  Not your father, an intelligent, hardworking man who has been laid off three times from jobs at which he excelled. A college graduate, he now works as an assistant grocery manager at the local Giant, earning much less than he did at all of his previous jobs.

  Not your mother, a smart, compassionate woman who teaches children with special needs. You were thirteen when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. You were fourteen when she began her treatments, when she lost her hair and over the course of five months went through at least a dozen different wigs.

  Your parents are a testament to the fact that life isn’t fair, yet they’ve never complained. Even when your father worked at a temp agency to help make sure the bills were paid on time, even when your mother lay in what everyone believed was her deathbed, they never said boo.

  They always stayed positive, no matter what happened. Always smiling. Always holding hands. Always telling you they loved you.

  It’s because of them you began to understand it doesn’t matter that life isn’t fair. No matter what it throws at you, how many curveballs, it’s your job, your purpose, to do your best. To never complain. To always put one step in front of the other and keep walking.

  Then one morning, the day after your high school graduation, you wake to a faint distant buzzing noise. You open your eyes, roll over in bed, and look at your alarm clock. It’s eleven-thirty. The distant buzzing is coming from your parents’ room. You’ve heard it for as long as you can remember, and it’s okay, because soon the buzzing will be turned off.

  You roll back over, reposition the pillow, and close your eyes.

  And still the buzzing continues: a repetitive bwaamp-bwaamp-bwaamp-bwaamp that has begun to drill into the side of your brain.

  You sit up, propping your elbow on the bed, and yell for someone to turn it off. You wait a few moments for a reply, maybe even silence, but all that answers you is the buzzing.

  You yell again, louder this time, and glance back at your own alarm clock. This early morning insanity has been going on now for five minutes. It feels like an hour. Grumbling under your breath, you throw off the sheets and get out of bed.

  Opening your door, you yell for your father. No answer, so you yell for your mother. No answer still, none except that annoying low bwaamp-bwaamp-bwaamp-bwaamp, which is much louder now that you’ve stepped into the hallway. You call out one final time, but when still no answer comes, you start to make your way toward their bedroom.

  Their door is closed. You knock, once, and call their names. Once again, no answer comes, and for the first time in the couple of minutes you’ve been awake, you begin to worry.

  Placing your hand on the doorknob, you notice you are shaking.

  When you open the door the first thing that hits you is the smell. Like a massive fist, it knocks you back just a couple steps, and for a moment you aren’t even aware of what you’re staring at: you aren’t aware of the two bodies on the bed, of all the blood.

  Your stomach tightens. The house begins to spin. Putting your hands to your mouth, you back away. You realize you’ve stopped breathing and in your throat bile is rising, and you look around the hallway, at once feeling frightened and alone.

  A dream, you tell yourself, this is just a nightmare, and any moment now you will wake up, you will open your eyes to the sound of a distant buzzing coming from your parents’ room—the same very buzzing now crying out inches from their dried blood and cold flesh.

  Bile is still in your throat, but you’re able to keep it down, you’re able to start breathing again. Lightheaded, disoriented, you turn away and head toward your room, the only thing you still know and trust.

  And you see it.

  On your door, you see the thing that will no doubt haunt you for the rest of your life. You see it and you know that this is no dream, that this is no simple nightmare. All this is real, all this is reality, and you are left standing there staring, trembling while your parents’ bodies lie motionless behind you.

  Only later does the nightmare begin.

  Chapter 1

  The church parking lot was deserted. I parked in the handicapped space closest to the entrance. The trailing police cruiser parked in the handicapped space beside me, and for a moment I expected the officer behind the wheel to shake his head, motion for me to back up and park in a regular spot. But when I looked over at him he had already shut off his car and had this morning’s paper open in front of him.

  Pastor James Young was waiting for me at the entrance. A man in his early fifties, with light brown eyes and a round, pleasant face, he wore chinos and a red polo shirt and shook my hand the moment I stepped inside.

  “Christopher,” he said solemnly, “how are you doing?”

  “Honestly?”

  He nodded.

  “Honestly, I’m exhausted.”

  It was June 6, 2003, and my parents had alrea
dy been dead for a week.

  Without a word Pastor James Young led me toward his office. The hallway was long and deserted, its carpet shaded midnight blue with a design of blood red diamonds scattered throughout. Just as we entered the lobby, I glanced up at the support beam in the ceiling and saw a body hanging from a noose.

  “Christopher?” The pastor was a few paces ahead, looking back at me with a frown. “Is everything all right?”

  I blinked and the body and the noose were gone. It was just a normal support beam, thick and wooden, its weathered look clashing with the flawless white paint.

  “Ever wonder the truth?”

  “It’s just a story,” I said, because I knew it was just a story, some ghost story a kid no doubt made up one day during service because he was bored. But ever since I was young I’d heard the stories, the rumors, the myths of that crossbeam.

  Staring up at the ceiling, Pastor James Young said, “The way I heard it, when this place was built fifty years ago, a local man came late one night and hung himself there. Supposedly he had done something awful, something he thought was unforgivable, and figured killing himself like that was the only way.”

  I wondered briefly how many times the pastor had told this story. For as long as he’d been here, he was no doubt asked about the beam. Did the story change slightly every time he told it—did he add something new? Or did he have the thing memorized and got so bored with the telling after so long that it was like saying one of the many Bible verses they make children learn in Sunday school?

  “The only way for what?” I asked.

  “Forgiveness. Redemption, maybe.” He shrugged. “Who really knows?”

  We continued walking again, down another hallway, and seconds later we were in his office, Pastor James Young behind his large oak desk, me in one of the two chairs facing him.

  “Now,” he said, “what is it I can help you with?”

  “To be honest, I’m not really sure you can help me at all.”

  He forced a smile. “I can always try.”

  Despite the church’s size—its attendance for both morning services was close to one thousand on any given Sunday—his office was tiny. Besides the desk, which took up a good quarter of the room, there were three filing cabinets huddled in one corner, and a large bookcase that covered nearly an entire wall. Books mostly on theology filled the shelves. A bonsai tree sat on a table behind his desk, and while it was positioned to receive sunlight from one of the two opened windows, it looked as if a few of its tiny branches had begun to wither.

  “How much do you know about what happened last week?”

  He looked down at his desk, moved a stack of papers from one side to the other, and sighed. “Just that your parents were murdered. That you found their bodies. That the police first suspected you of doing it but then cleared you.”

  “That’s it?”

  He nodded.

  So that sounded about right. Those were the key facts, the essential information, that was put in the papers. Not about what was painted on my bedroom door. Not about how it was supposedly a calling card from the killer saying I was next.

  “I’m going away for a little,” I said. “For a week or a month, I don’t know how long. Steve ... well, he wanted me to talk to a psychiatrist before I left. Wanted to make sure I’m okay in the head.”

  The frown appeared on the pastor’s face again. “So then why did Police Chief Carpenter ask that I speak with you?”

  “Because I told him I’d rather see you instead.”

  “Why?”

  I glanced away, toward the wall that had random pictures of different sizes scattered all over a large corkboard. Many were of Pastor James Young and his family—his wife and two sons—while others showed him together with various church families. One of those church families was my parents. Taken at what looked like a church picnic, the pastor standing between my father and mother, all three of them with their arms around their shoulders, smiling at the camera.

  “Christopher? Why did you want to see me instead?”

  I leaned forward in my seat. Opened my mouth but didn’t say anything.

  “Are feeling okay?” James Young asked. “You look pale. Do you want something to drink? I can get you a bottle of water. Or—” His eyes shifted to something on his desk. “How about a lollipop?”

  It was then that I noticed the jar of lollipops on his desk. Together they created the color of the rainbow. I remembered it was one of Pastor Young’s trademarks, to always have a lollipop or two in his suit jacket every Sunday morning. Oftentimes a child might start acting up, begin crying, and while he was in the lobby he would hold out a lollipop and say, “Hey now, no need to be sad.” It was the same thing he’d said to me the day I was baptized. I had been five years old. I was nervous, having to go out in front of a full congregation of strangers, and began crying. And James Young, the good pastor that he was, pulled out a red lollipop, leaned down, and with a smile said, “Hey now, Christopher, no need to be sad.”

  It had been true then, but now, thirteen years later, my life had been turned upside down. Family that I’d hardly even known existed was now a part of my life, and I would soon be traveling with them to New York to hide away from what could only be called a sociopath.

  “What’s that?” I said, pointing past the jar of rainbow-colored lollipops at something else on his desk. “You’re not recording this, are you?”

  He gave me a peculiar look, then glanced down at the tape recorder resting beside his telephone. He placed a hand on it, shaking his head. “No, of course not. Before you came I was listening to a tape Matt Hatfield sent me yesterday. They had a speaker over at Trinity last weekend he wanted me to hear. The man travels around the country with his—”

  “Do demons exist?”

  A breeze came through the opened windows, causing the bonsai tree to shiver.

  Pastor James Young said, “I’m sorry?”

  “Demons,” I said. “Do they exist?”

  “That’s why you wanted to see me? To ask me about”—he cleared his throat—“demons?”

  “Actually, I’d originally wanted to discuss the indifference of God. You know, that whole why-does-bad-stuff-happen-to-good-people debate.”

  “And you don’t want to discuss that anymore?”

  “Not really. Pardon my French, but I figure if we did discuss that, you’d give me one long line of bullshit, and I really don’t have the patience for that right now.”

  “So instead you’d rather ask me about demons.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Any particular reason why?”

  “Just curious.”

  He was silent for a moment, just watching me, before speaking. “Why, yes, of course they exist.”

  “Can you prove it?”

  “They’re mentioned in the Bible.”

  “No, I mean something more substantial.”

  “I baptized you when you were very young. If you don’t mind my asking, Christopher, are you still a believer?”

  “That doesn’t pertain to my question.”

  “But it does. Because if you believe that God exists, then you believe that Satan exists. And if you believe that they exist, then you must also believe that angels and demons exist.”

  “But how do you know?”

  He opened his mouth, started to say something, then shut it. Seemed to think for a few seconds, before saying, “Faith.”

  I shook my head. “That’s not good enough.”

  “Okay, then what about ghosts? Do you believe that ghosts exist?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “You know it’s funny, but people around the world are more apt to believe in the existence of ghosts than they are in demons. Maybe that’s because through the ages people have come to think of demons as these little red creatures with horns and tails and pitchforks. But they’re nothing like that. They ... they’re just like angels in a way, but no longer good.”

  He leaned forward i
n his chair, setting his hands on the desktop.

  “Some people also believe that when you die, you become either an angel or a demon. This is untrue. Angels and demons, they’re completely different species than us. They were here close to the beginning of time and they’ll be here toward the end of time, but we humans ... our existence lasts only in a blink of God’s eye.”

  He paused.

  “Christopher, I’d really like to help you here, but I can’t do that unless you tell me what’s going on. Why are you asking about demons?”

  I glanced at the wall of pictures again. “Last week,” I started to say, but then faltered, lost my voice. I cleared my throat and tried again. “Last week, after what happened, I remembered a dream I had about a year ago. In the dream I was walking around a massive store, like a Walmart, and it was completely deserted. Eventually I needed to take a piss so I went into the bathroom. It was really bright inside and silent, so much so when the door shut it echoed.”

  My eyes had focused on the picture of my parents.

  “So then I’m standing there at the urinal, just minding my own business, when someone comes out of one of the stalls. He doesn’t flush the toilet or anything, he just opens the door and comes out. And ... and somehow I’m seeing all of this, like from a third person point of view. I see myself standing at the urinal, and I see this man walking from the stalls toward the sinks. To get there, he needs to pass me, and I don’t really think too much about it, because why should I? But it’s right when he passes me, his shoes echoing off the floor, that he suddenly steps forward, wraps his hands around my neck, and starts choking me.”

  I blinked, looked back at the pastor.

  “And at that same moment I woke up and I ... I couldn’t breathe. It was like someone was standing right over me, trying to choke the life out of me. I couldn’t move. I tried waving my arms around but I just couldn’t move. And it was still dark in my room but I could have sworn I saw someone leaning over me, right there in front of me with his hands around my neck. And ... well, I eventually managed to fall off the bed. Once I hit the floor I could breathe again. And I looked around, trying to catch my breath, and in every corner I expected to see someone there, someone ... you know, the person who had just tried choking me. It was still early in the morning, both my parents were asleep, so I went back to bed. But I couldn’t sleep. I just lay there and watched the corners, figuring that the moment I closed my eyes, the shadows would move and the person hiding there would come back out and finish the job.”