The City of Rossford

You do not have to have read the previous Rossford trilogy, but it might help. In fact, it would help a lot. If you would like to start there, it begins with The Houses in Rossford. As for my friends waiting for more otherworldly fair, The Book of the Blessed will be coming next week, and the conclusion of the vampire books the week after: just in time for Easter!

Part One

Sunset

One

THE NIGHT OF THE GANG RAPE, Chay got the call, and all the days around that time people would shake their heads and say, “Things like this don’t happen in Rossford. Things like this never happen.” But even when Chay ran out of the store and climbed into a car that wasn’t his to drive toward Rossford High School, he knew that was a lie. Things like this happened everywhere and to anyone if you were in the wrong place, if you didn’t look behind you. And now they were happening to Robin. They had happened to Robin.

“Sheridan, wherever you are, get here now!” Chay shouted into his phone.

In front of Rossford High, the sirens blinked and rolled around spilling lurid red and blue light over the streets. It made everything look like a crime show, and Chay could hear his father saying, “I should never have let you go there. I went to public school. You should have gone to Saint Barbara’s.”

Behind him, Chay could hear feet pounding Mirrin Street, and it didn’t look anything like the quiet neighborhood north of Edgefield where happy children went to high school.

“Hey, Chay, did you hear?”

Mathan was panting as he ran toward him. He went hands to knees.

“Yeah, I just came,” Chay decided to push through the crowd, but Mathan caught his wrist.

“You can’t do that, man.”

“But she’s my friend.”

“But she’s in police custody. They’re going to take her to the hospital.”

“What the fuck happened?” Chay demanded.

Mathan threw his hands up in the air and shrugged.

“We had a basketball game tonight—which you never come to.”

“I had to work.”

“Well,” Mathan said, “I was coming out of the gym, and that’s when I saw the sirens. And that’s when I called you. And… Where the fuck did you get that car from?”

Chay took a cigarette from his jacket pocket and reached into his trousers for a lighter.

“I stole it.”

“She was naked,” Meredith told the detective, pushing her hair out of her face. “I was coming out of the game. She was supposed to come with me.”

Meredith’s face was blue and then red as the lights swept over her. “But she said she couldn’t. And then I was coming out with Marlee and there she was, just bleeding. Just… all of her clothes... God! What happened to her? Oh, my God!” Meredith stood up and interrupted herself. “Those are my friends over there. Those are her friends. We’re her friends. Let me get them.”

“Ma’am,” the cop said, and Meredith thought it was strange that this grown man was calling her ma’am, “not just yet. We’ve got a few more things to ask you.”

“That’s all I know,” Meredith said, frantically, shaking as if she could cast something off. They were lifting Robin onto a stretcher and into the ambulance. The ambulance light was twirling. As it left, the siren was whirring.

“I need to get my friends. And we need to go to the hospital.”

“Ma’am—”

“Why are you calling me ma’am if you’re not even going to let me go?”

“We are going to let you go. Only, ma’am, we may have to call you again.”

“Yes,” Meredith said. “Sure. Here’s my number.” She took her phone out and read off her number.

“Call me anytime. Please. But… not right now.”

Meredith held up her hand before the cop could say anything else, and she trotted across the crowded seen toward Chay and Mathan.

“Where the hell is Sheridan?”

Chay shrugged, but before he could say anything, Meredith hugged him quickly, and then hugged Mathan.

“I’ve been dialing him since Mathan called me,” Chay said. “Still no answer.”

Meredith took the phone from Chay, dialed a number and then bellowed, “This is Meredith. Everything’s fucked up around here. Get your ass to the hospital as soon as possible. We really need you.”

She shut the phone savagely and handed it back to her friend.

“If that doesn’t do it,” Meredith said, “I don’t know what will.”

The old priest sat in his room, hardfaced. There had always been something steely about him. His face was eagle like and his hair was a deep, steel blue. Into the room came a young, brunette man, swarthy, with features like the priest, and the priest pointed to the television.

“Just look at that, Sean.”

Sean put down the popcorn and sat down beside his uncle. Above the television was a plain wooden crucifix with an almost invisible brass Jesus.

“Tonight at Rossford Public High School, tragedy has struck. Junior, Robin Netteson—”

Flash to a bad picture of a plump girl, in a cheerleading costume—

“Was found semi-conscious, beaten bleeding and naked outside of the gymnasium.”

“I came outside… and she was naked. She was supposed to come with me tonight, but she said she couldn’t. I’ve been calling all of our friends,” a girl said, stammering over her words as she tried to keep herself together.

“I know her,” Sean said, his brows knitting. “That’s Meredith. I know her.”

“Do you know the girl?” his uncle asked, meaning the girl who had been raped.

“I’ve seen her,” Sean answered, sitting down and frowning. “I’ve seen her. But I don’t really know her.”

“Things like this just don’t happen in Rossford,” a slightly round girl said, with hair the priest judged to be too long and too untidy.

“Oh, yes they do, girlie,” the old man’s fingers unconsciously went to the little cross around his neck. “They happen every day. Everywhere.”

“What’s the world coming to?” Sean wondered.

The priest looked at his nephew, skeptically.

“Now you sound just like that girl,” he said.

“She was supposed to be coming with us….” Meredith said over and over again on the television.

“I know you always looked after her, I know you did,” Mr. Netteson was saying when he and Robin’s mother came into the lobby. “I know all of you guys did.”

“She’s fine,” Mathan said to them. “I mean,” he revised, “she’ll be okay, we’ll make sure she’s okay.”

“I know you will.” Mr. Netteson said. “We all will.”

Eileen Nettison seemed incapable of speech and Chay came up and touched her lightly on the wrist.

She looked at him.

He kissed her quickly.

“Everything’ll work out,” he said.

She looked at him, and seemed to be seeing him for the first time.

“Yes, Chay,” she said. “Thank you, Chay.”

“Where is Sheridan?” Meredith shut her phone again.

“I can’t find him,” she reported. “I’ve been dialing all night.”

Mathan put a hand over hers.

“You’re almost as frantic as them,” he whispered.

“You just think I sound like some dumb white girl.”

Mathan grinned and said, “Not yet.”

Meredith pushed her hair back, and cleared her throat.

“Then I’ll try not to go there.”

“Everything’ll be alright,” Mathan said.

“Not for Robin.”

“Yes for Robin. Even for Robin,” Mathan looked up at Robin’s parents who were fretting, twisting their hands as they walked back and forth in the lobby.

“If Sheridan was any kind of friend…”

“Then his phone would be on all the time? Stop that. You know it’s not right.”

Chay sat down with them.

Meredith and Mathan looked to him. Meredith placed her hand over his.

“How are you?”

Chay shook his head.

“Now I’m worried about Sheridan.”

“Nothing’s happened to him,” Meredith dismissed this.

“We thought nothing had happened to Robin,” Chay said. “We let her out of our sight one minute…” he shrugged. “I thought I was such a bad ass. I can’t even watch my friend. Oh, by the way, you’d better call your Dad.”

“Shit!” Meredith remembered.

As Meredith dialed home she muttered, “I guess that means I used to be rich, too. Oh, well… Yeah, Dad. I’m at the hospital. No, I’m fine. No. Don’t send her. Don’t send anyone. Yeah. You’ve seen the news? Yeah. Yeah… We’re just waiting for word….” Meredith looked around the lobby, fretting before repeating, “Just… waiting for a word.”

The phone rang and Sean picked it up even though his uncle had signaled for him to ignore it.

“Hello, Saint Agatha’s rectory. Yes. Yes… It’s Sean. Hold on. He’s not asleep yet. I’ll ask him.”

“They know damn well,” Father Frank said, “that after ten o’clock I do not exist.”

“It was Mark Dance from the church board.”

“Oh, God!”

“He thought that it would be a good idea to open the church up tonight. In light of what’s happened. So people can come together. You know? Pray. Light candles.”

The old man looked at his nephew steadily.

“You think it’s a good idea, don’t you?”

“I think it doesn’t hurt.”

“It doesn’t help either,” Frank got up from his battered old armchair. “People always get God the same time they get sentimental. If they got God before hand then we wouldn’t have to have midnight vigils in the church.”

“He’s still on the phone,” Sean reminded his uncle.

“Oh, hell. Tell him yes.”

“Good,” Sean decided. “You know, Saint Barbara’s never locks its doors.”

“Saint Barbara’s isn’t in the middle of downtown Rossford with junkies and cokeheads sitting on its steps,” Frank returned, shuffling into his coat.