The Second Coming
By
Griffin Hayes
Copyright © 2011 Griffin Hayes
http://griffin-hayes.blogspot.com/
Cover design by Kit Foster
Smashwords Edition
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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The Second Coming
“Now, I'd like to go over this one more time.”
Ten little words, that’s all they were. But they were enough to make the vein on Jack Barrow’s forehead bulge out like a great bloody worm. More than enough.
Dr. Sims noticed the look of tension and leaned forward, his teeth clamped onto the bend of his reading glasses. His head—salt and pepper gray—was tilted forward and when he looked up at Jack, his eyes were three quarter whites. It was late in the day and a stream of fading sunlight gave the office a warm and lazy feel. The blinds were down, turned open, cutting the room with vertical shadows. One of these shadows was across Jack’s eyes and whenever he moved his head the glare was just enough to make him wince. He was sure this had been a careful ploy, masterminded by Dr. Sims as a means of psychological manipulation. Keep the patients on edge, he thought. Maybe then they won’t be thinking about the questions before they answer ’em. May even find themselves eager when the time comes to be put back into their padded cell. The man had a sadistic side to him all right.
“Why’d they bring you here, anyhow?” Jack wondered out loud. “To ridicule me?”
“I read your case file, Mr. Barrow, and I found it rather fascinating. I find you fascinating. The line that separates civilized man from his primitive self has always been a subject that intrigues me. What is it that makes one man a doctor and another capable of…”
“You think I’m whacked outta my mind, don't you?”
There was a clinical look on Dr. Sims’s face. “I believe you are absolutely convinced what you’ve told me is the truth.”
Jack nodded and the sunlight made him blink.
“You understand why we’re here, don’t you?” Sims asked him. The question seemed somehow rhetorical.
“You’re here,” Dr. Sims said, answering his own question, “because one month ago you were picked up in Kelly Park. Charged with … uh …” He slid his glasses on and glanced down at the chart in his lap, flipping through a sheaf of papers. “Assault with a deadly weapon …”
“I was freezing … hadn’t eaten in days. I’d come back with nothing.”
“Come back. Yes, you say you came back to ‘save your wife and kids’ as you put it, why then did you not go to them first?"
“Doc, we’ve already been over this.” Jack’s voice had gone up a notch and he saw the change in Dr. Sims’s expression.
There was a chance, Jack knew, that Sims might end the session right then and there. In the handful of times they had met, Jack had seen how moody and childish the doctor could sometimes be, especially when he didn’t get his way. But that didn’t happen. Instead, Sims leaned back, crossed his arms over his clipboard and said, “We’ve had what, almost a half dozen sessions together so far, you and I? Maybe more.”
Jack propped a hand over his eyes to block the sun.
“And in all that time you’ve never offered me a single shred of evidence to support this story of yours.” Dr. Sims held up a solitary index finger and to Jack it looked like a judge’s gavel. “Not one,” the doctor’s lips mouthed.
“That’s not true,” Jack beamed in quickly. “I gave you the jockey, uh, Rich … no … Stanley Peck. I told you he was gonna win the Derby. That I did tell you.”
Sims’s face flashed with annoyance. “You did, Mr. Barrow, and he was favored five to one. Now, had you told me Longjacket Pete would have come up from the rear to beat the thirty to one odds against him, I’d have an easier time believing you.”
“I never told you I was psychic.”
“No,” Sims said. “No, you didn’t.”
“But you still don’t get it.” Jack’s voice was rising again. “It doesn’t matter whether or not you believe me cause right now, while we’re sitting here wasting time, while he’s getting rea–”
“Who? Who’s he? The man you say is going to kill your family?”
Jack paused. The throbbing in his head was beginning to make him feel dizzy. He could still feel the nodule at the back of his skull where the crowbar had connected.
“Yes,” he snapped, looking over Sims’s shoulder to the calendar on his desk.
“Eric, my son, will forget to remove the key from the niche above our front door. I’d told him it was the first place anyone would look …”
“And that’s how he gets in?”
“Yeah, like I told you a thousand times already and a million times before that …”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Mr. Barrow. It matters a great deal whether or not I believe you, because it’ll be with my recommendation that you do or do not leave Bellevue Heights.”
Jack shrank. “Goddamn nuthouse is what it is.”
“Now,” Sims paused. “We need to go back and start from the beginning, Mr. Barrow. Start right from the first and go through everything that happens. Just one last time. As if you and I had just met …”
Jack was shaking his head when the thought of Chinese water torture came to him. He had heard the expression first as a child growing up in Cleveland. His Uncle Sal, the kids had called him “knuckles,” had come back from the war in Korea with a real chip on his shoulder. A Chinese sniper had taken three of his fingers off at the joint and with them, what little sense of humor Sal had left. Jack always remembered that funny look on his face whenever he told them about how those Chinks used to tie folks up under big ol’ buckets of water with tiny holes poked in the bottom. Just enough for a drop or two at a time, no more. And how you were tied just right so that the water would hit your forehead dead centre each and every time. Of course, as Knuckles told it, the first two hundred drops never did much more than annoy the hell out of you. At about the first thousand, the skin on your head would start to redden. And by twenty thousand, when your head was beginning to bear more than a passing resemblance to a soggy watermelon, you were telling those sick bastards anything they wanted to hear. In a very real way, this was precisely how Jack felt at this very moment. Forced to tell his story again and again, shrink after shrink. Over and over. Drop after excruciating drop.
There was something disquieting about Dr. Sims Jack couldn’t quite put his finger on. He was vastly different from the army of doctors who had lined Jack up in their sights in the past few weeks. Most of the others wanted nothing more than to skip over the gruesome details of that night. But not Sims. He must’ve told the story dozens of times already and Sims never seemed to tire of it. Once, near the beginning, Jack even thought he caught a flash of titillation in the old man’s face. The sick fuck likes it.
Jack’s head slipped into the open palms of his hands. For what he hoped was the last time, he began telling his story.
“October 12th was when it happened. Little after 2:30 in the morning. A man came into my house holding a crowbar. Strolled right in through the front door. Probably hadn’t taken him longer than thirty seconds to find the key above the door. First, he made his way into my daughter Jenny’s room and beat her so brutally the police later found blood inside her Winnie the Pooh light fixture on the ceiling. Then to my son Eric’s room, where in a matter of seconds, his skull was made to look like the back of it was opened with a handful of TNT.” Jack’s eyes met Dr. Sims’s and hardened. “From there, he found my wife’s room and by the time he was done with her, she was in pieces along with my unborn son.”
“And where were you through all of this?” There was a note of disbelief in Sims’s voice and Jack didn’t like it one bit.
“Me?” Jack said, not completely able to dodge the feeling of stinging guilt tearing at his insides. “Downstairs on the couch. Look, I don’t want you to think that everything was perfect between Susan and me. We had our problems like every other couple. On most days we were okay, and sometimes things got a little crazy. And when we just couldn’t agree and it was between feeling lonely on the couch downstairs or feeling lonely lying in bed next to her, well, I’d rather have been downstairs.”
Sims seemed to be enjoying himself again. “Go on,” he said.
“I came awake with a start and saw that the TV in the corner of the room was on and showin’ snowy static. And I remember getting up to take a piss and seeing that the front door was swinging wide open. Well my heart just about leapt right into my throat. I rushed upstairs and straight for my daughter’s room. It wasn’t that I loved her more or anything, Doc, it was just that her room was at the top of the stairs. When I switched her light on, all the blood ran into my feet. I remember my hand covering my mouth. I remember my fingers slipping inside, pulling at my tongue. Then I heard a muffled sound, like a steel rod whacking at something wet. It was coming from our bedroom. It was coming from my wife. I ran with legs that felt like Jell-O. In our room was the mangled shape of a woman sprawled on the bed and the curtains against the far wall were billowing as if someone had heard my scream and left in a hurry.”
Sims was taking notes again and he stopped and peered over the rim of his spectacles. “But he wasn’t gone, was he?”
Jack’s hands were trembling. “No.” His bottom lip quivered and Dr. Sims put a tentative hand on his shoulder.
Jack regained himself.
“He was behind you,” Sims said.
Jack nodded. “With the crowbar.”
“You must have seen him then and called the poli—”
“No. I couldn’t see a goddamn thing, but the bastard whispered something just before he hit me: ‘This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you …’ ” Jack was holding his head. “Then he hit me ...”
“He left you for dead, didn’t he?”
“Yes. And for a long time after I wished he had killed me.”
“And all this on the 12th of October this year, you say.”
Jack nodded, knowing with sickening certainty what would come next.
“You understand my dilemma then, don’t you?” Dr. Sims asked.
Jack was silent.
“Today is October 8th, Mr. Barrow. What you’re describing hasn’t happened yet.”
*
“I know it seems crazy,” Jack was saying. “Time travel is the kinda shit you see in those black and white science fiction movies. But if you check the Wilbur County records for a Jack W. Barrow, you’ll see I’m not lying.”
For the first time, Sims’s face was almost expressionless. Almost. But Jack could see a twinge of clinical contempt, wiggling beneath the surface.
“Find my driver’s license, you’ll see the resemblance. For God’s sake you’ll see
it.” Tears of frustration were welling behind Jack’s eyes.
“Wilbur County records, eh? And the address?” Sims's pen was poised.
Jack looked up, suddenly hopeful. “You’re—”
“I may,” Dr. Sims answered with reservation.
“Two twenty-four Crescent Lane. That’s where I live. Big white house with navy blue shutters. The eaves over the garage are bent outta shape. I was cleaning the leaves out a few years back … Oh, and the welcome mat at the front door says adios amigos. My wife thought that was the funniest thing she’d ever seen. But—” Jack trailed off.
Dr. Sims glanced up from his notes.
“You may see me.”
A confused expression flashed across Dr. Sims’s face. “I don’t—”
“I’ve come back,” Jack said. “But the other me. The me that sees it happen is still here.
I—” His fingers went to his temples. His face became the color of old ketchup, drying in the hot sun.
“Mr. Barrow, you don’t look well.”
“II’m fine. It’s just that, going back messes something awful with your head. It’s like shakin’ a box filled with only half the pieces of a puzzle and hoping that when you peel off the lid and lay it down you’ll be able to make sense of it.”
Dr. Sims adjusted his glasses. “You still haven’t explained to me how you came back? In time that is.”
Jack paused. “I’m still not entirely sure myself,” came his sudden reply. “I think a part of me is still back there, in the future, lying on my bed. That’s why I feel so …” Jack stopped, searching for the right word.
“Fragmented,” Dr. Sims offered.
“Yes, exactly.” Jack paused. “You know that feeling when you fall asleep and you dream of something you’ve wanted badly for so long?”
Dr. Sims seemed to weigh the question for a moment. “I think I do.”
“And that dream seems so real, you can’t tell what’s the dream and what’s not.”
“Yes.”
“Well, this is that dream. Me stuck in this room talking to you. And for some reason I can’t wake up. I can’t wake up. I feel as though God gave me a chance to fix what went wrong and I’ve screwed it up.” Jack’s body convulsed with violent fits of sobbing.
It was dark outside when the session ended. Dr. Sims stood up—and when he did so the joints in his knees made a sharp popping sound. Sims opened the lights and went to his desk where he pushed a button beside the phone. Two men wearing white uniforms came in and gently ushered Jack from the room. As Jack left, Dr. Sims could see he was still crying.
*
October 12th
Jack was back in Dr. Sims’s office awaiting his decision. It was early afternoon, but the sky outside was gray and overcast. Inside, the room was dim, the corners webbed with shadow.
“It’s good news, I hope,” Jack said, not entirely believing it.
Dr. Sims sat down, removed his glasses and rubbed the red marks on the bridge of his nose.
“Jack, I’m not sure where to begin so I’ll just come out and say it. I looked into what you told me last night. And in doing so, everything you’ve been saying has begun to make sense. I feel foolish really that I hadn’t seen it before.”
Jack’s face filled with a look of confusion.
“You were right. There was a white house at 224 Crescent Lane with navy blue shutters. And it did belong to a man named Jack Barrow, just like you said.” Sims took a deep breath and looked up. “On today’s date, ten years ago, however, Jack, a man went into that house and murdered a woman and her two young children. Neither the killer nor the husband was ever found. Less than a year later the house was bulldozed because no one would live in it.” Sims sank back in his chair.
“Now, is there something you wanted to tell me?”
Jack’s eyes grew to saucers. “Impossible!” There was a touch of danger in his voice.
“You’re lying!”
“I wish I was.” Sims looked down at his chart. “You killed your family, didn’t you, Jack? You murdered them in their sleep and then somehow erased it from your memory. I’ve notified the police, Jack. I’m sorry, but at this point it’s out of my hands.” Sims and Jack both looked at the phone on the desk at the same time.
Jack rose on shaky legs. “I don’t have time for this, Doc. I gotta get outta here right this minute!”
He staggered menacingly toward Sims.
Dr. Sims leaned back and pressed the button on his desk. “Come now, Jack, don’t do anything you’ll regret.”
A moment later, the door swung open and the two men in white came for Jack. He backed away, and one of them grabbed his left wrist. Jack spun and punched him square on the nose. The explosion of blood fanned out, hitting Jack in the eye, blinding him. The other orderly fell in with his baton, smacking him in the back of the head. Jack fell to one knee. He could feel the plates of his skull coming apart again.
Dr. Sims was coming forward now with a needle in his hand. He plucked it into Jack’s arm and for a moment the doctor’s face seemed to soften.
Sims paused before depressing the plunger. “This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you." Jack’s face filled with bewilderment and then horror and finally rage. He leaned forward to grab the lapels of Sims’s jacket, leaned forward to rip the man’s smiling face right off his skull, but instead he fell to the ground, his eyes rolled up to whites.
*
Later that evening, at 2:33 in the morning to be exact, Dr. Sims arrived before a large white house with blue shutters and a funny little doormat. He glanced down at his notes and then up at the numbers over the mailbox: 224. There was a smile on his lips, like anticipation. He reached for the ledge above the front door, his fingers fumbling over and then grasping the spare key from its hiding place. Sims had lied to Jack. That thinnest of lines separating man from his deepest, darkest desires was more than just a passing interest. No, for Sims it had become something of an obsessive fixation, hadn't it? He unlocked the door and pushed it open with his free hand. In the other was a crowbar.
An excerpt from Malice by Griffin Hayes. Available where eBooks are sold.
Chapter 1
The stranger grinned and his sunken cheeks made his face look like a skull.
“Go on, Lysander,” his father, Glenn, scolded. “Shake the man’s hand.”
Lysander Shore’s family hadn’t been in Millingham longer than a week, but he was sure somehow he had met this man somewhere before. Maybe filling bags at the grocery store or delivering mail down the street? This was going to torture him the whole day.
Lysander stuffed his lunch into his knapsack and then slowly held out his hand. The cold palm that slid into his a second later made Lysander’s stomach turn. His father must have noticed the discomfort on Lysander’s face, because Glenn’s cheeks flushed with embarrassment. At least for once it wasn’t about Lysander’s black nail polish or matching combat boots.
“You’ll have to excuse the mess,” Glenn said, clearing a place on the couch where the stranger could sit. “We’re still getting settled.”
A pin on the lapel of the man’s suit jacket read “Peter Hume” and below that “Zellermann’s.” He was probably an insurance guy, Lysander thought, here about the fire that had destroyed their old house in Hayward.
The two men spoke about how the house was a complete write-off, his father running through a list of things that were destroyed, when Peter Hume peered up at Lysander. The odd glint in his eye instantly made Lysander uneasy.
“Do you have any pictures?” Hume asked Glenn. “So we can take inventory of what you lost.”
“Yeah,” Glenn said, looking at his watch. “You need those now? I gotta leave for work.”
Hume smiled apologetically. “I’m afraid so.”
Glenn sighed, as he always did when asked to do something menial but necessary, and headed for the kitchen. “You want something to drink?”
“Earl Grey would be nice.”
“That’s the only tea we have,” Glenn said robotically. He seemed dazed. Or was he hypnotized? Lysander couldn’t tell which.
Hume’s eyes were shining. “Legend has it an old Chinese man gave Lord Grey the recipe for saving his son’s life, if you believe that sort of thing.”
His father shrugged and disappeared into the kitchen.
Now Lysander and Peter Hume were alone and the air in the room seemed to drop ten degrees. Slowly, the smile disappeared from Hume’s face.
“You were warned not to come here,” Hume said, his voice gravelly, almost hoarse. Lysander peered down at Hume’s scalp and saw the man’s translucent flesh squeezing the plates of his skull together.
Lysander’s breath caught in his throat.
“He knows, Lysander.” Hume’s voice was more forceful. Desperate. “Knows you’re here. He knew the minute you arrived. Felt you crossing the town line, just like I did ...”
Lysander’s mouth was frozen open in a mix of confusion and disbelief.
And then, Lysander knew where he had seen this man before. It was Hume’s hollow face that had been glaring back at him from the old weathered placard that greeted visitors on their way into town. And etched below him in crooked red letters had been the words:
STAY AWAY
But at the time Lysander was sure his mind had been playing tricks on him, because when he passed that same weathered sign on the town line days later, everything had changed. Even Hume’s face was gone. In its place was a beaming, happy-looking family.
WELCOME TO MILLINGHAM!
A tiny impression appeared in Hume’s forehead, and from it a thick drop of blood rolled down his face. The man’s sockets were receding into the back of his head. A noise came from the kitchen and Hume’s cavernous eyes darted over Lysander’s shoulder. The fear bubbling in his voice was palpable. “He hasn’t found me,” Hume whispered. “Not yet. But you. You, he’ll know right away.”
Lysander tried to say something, anything, but all that came was a moan.
Run Lysander! Turn your ass around and RUN!
“He could be any one of them,” Hume croaked. “They all look so innocent, don’t they? With their little white houses and their hybrid SUVs. Hard to imagine there’s a monster coiled somewhere in all that.” Hume’s eyes—black bottomless chasms now—rose to meet Lysander’s, and when he did the expression on his face fell flat. “You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you? You haven’t remembered yet.”
Lysander felt the muscles in his chest knot with fear.
“He’s come to finish it, Lysander.” The structure of his face was coming undone. Blood flowed freely from his forehead. Into his mouth. Drenching the dark fabric of his suit and the upholstery of the couch. Lysander could see bits of splintered bone and flaps of dangling flesh. It looked like someone had redecorated his face with a tire iron. “That’s why he’s here. To finish it …”
Lysander staggered back and nearly tripped over a moving box filled with old books. Glenn reached out a hand and caught him. He was holding a cup of tea. A photo album was wedged under his armpit. “Mr. Hume?”
Hume’s face rose. Tight and skull-like, but nothing like the monstrosity from a moment before.
Glenn was handing Hume his Earl Grey when he turned to Lysander. “You better hurry or you’re going to be late for school. It’s already a quarter past.”
The alarm in his father’s voice rattled him. Lysander snatched his school bag off the floor, shoved his lunch back inside and left the room as fast as he could.
“I wasn’t really expecting you till tonight,” he heard his father tell Hume as he sped away, “so I hope we can make this fast.”
Lysander was trying to steady his hand over the front door handle when Hume replied.
“Keeping you safe and sound, that’s our motto at Zellermann’s.”
It was on the long walk to school that Lysander tried to make sense of what he had just seen. The whole thing seemed to happen so fast. Hell, he wasn’t sure he’d even closed the door behind him.
Whenever Lysander closed his eyes, that’s when he’d see the stranger’s face dissolving all over again.
He’s come to finish it, was what that creepy bastard had said.
Who was the he Hume had been talking about? Lysander wondered uneasily. More than that, Lysander wanted to know what he had meant by finish it?
One thing was certain, there had been a serious look of desperation on Hume’s face before it began to look like raw hamburger meat. No, more than desperation. Hume was scared shitless.
That made two of them.
Chapter 2
A heavy rain had swept over Millingham the night before, leaving the roads slick and shiny. The sky was low and thick with heavy gray clouds that threatened to open up at any moment. Samantha Crow stared out the police car window. She loved the stillness, the clean feeling after a rain, the way the air smelled soggy.
A steady clicking sounded from the car dashboard. Her father, Steven Crow, the city’s sheriff, made a lazy left-hand turn.
“People driving slow this morning,” her father said. He fancied a white handlebar mustache—a carryover from his hero, Wyatt Earp. “Good thing, ‘cause it’s slippery out there and we need to get you to school. Couldn’t afford to be pulling anyone over, now could I?” He winked at her, twitching a matching white bushy eyebrow, and she smiled weakly in return.
“You’re gonna have to think about a graduation dress, you know,” he said.
Samantha remained silent, eyes closed.
“You know, I asked your mother to prom. I don’t think I was her first choice, though.” He laughed, the way older people often laughed at the humorless things they said. “Had her eye on a boy named Billy Dobbins. But I never gave up, Sam. Went out and bought myself a nice new suit.”
Samantha’s blackened lips began to tighten.
Her father combed his mustache with the flat tips of his fingers. “She was a good woman, your mother.” He glanced over and caught her change of expression. “I’m just thinking that with the way you dress. What do they call it? Goth? I just wouldn’t be surprised if some nice boy might pass you up.”
“I’m not a Goth.” Her laugh bore a threatening edge. “And what’s wrong with the way I dress?” She crossed her arms, glaring straight ahead.
“No, not wrong …” he said. “Definitely not wrong, honey, just different. We don’t live in the big city, where people wear leather trench coats and knee-high boots.” His expression darkened. “I spoke to Mike Spiolis last week. You know, my friend over at the NYPD. He was telling me how a young boy and his father were waiting for the subway train when a man who lost his job as a middle school janitor came up behind them and pushed them both onto the tracks. Boy’s father managed to throw his son clear in time, but he stepped on the third rail trying to get out and jolted himself with 750 volts of electricity. When they asked the guy afterward why he had done it, you know what his answer was?”
Sam’s face was blank.
“He said he wanted someone else to know how it felt to lose something they loved.”
Samantha sighed, tired of her father’s horror stories. “I’d rather take my chances with lunatics trying to push me in front of subway trains than spending my life living in a bubble.”
“You know, your mother and …”
“Can we not talk about Mom like she’s still around?”
He pushed his glasses up on his face. “The day your mother died was the worst day of my life. Thank God you’re too young to know what it feels like to turn over at night and not have that person there anymore. You have no idea. No idea.”
Whatever pity had started welling up within her was squashed flat when she remembered what had happened at the house this morning.
She had gone into her father’s room to ask him for lunch money and had found his girlfriend, Sheila Evans, jiggling the bathroom door handle. The bathroom where her mother’s body had been found. The one nobody went into anymore.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Samantha screamed, her anger fueled more by her hatred for the woman than by what she was trying to do.
Sheila’s face blanched. One of her sagging breasts lolled out of the satin negligee she was wearing. She fumbled it back inside, embarrassed. “I was just …”
“Going to use the washroom…He didn’t tell you, did he?”
Sheila was beginning to regain her composure, and anger was replacing shock. “Tell me what, Samantha?”
“That the day my mother died, the day someone came into our house and killed her, he stopped going in there. Betcha he forgot to mention that ol’ chestnut. No, didn’t want to frighten off his new lay.”
Sheila’s face became a mask of disbelief. No one had ever spoken to her that way before. And if Sam was lucky, it might just be enough to keep her from ever coming back.
She watched her father as he turned the corner, the memory of what happened so fresh she could still smell the trail of Sheila’s cheap perfume as she’d stormed away.
“And of all the people in town, did it have to be the principal of my school, Dad?”
“Life goes on after people die, Sam. It’s a tough lesson, I know, but it’s one we all have to learn. Besides, your mother would have wanted us to be happy.”
Sam clenched her fists. “None of us can be happy, Dad, because the day she was murdered, all that happiness packed its bags and went on vacation, permanently.”
“Your mother was not murdered, goddammit.” A hank of hair tumbled into his face, and he combed it back with a shaky hand. “Sam, you’re gonna have to accept the truth or you’ll end up a bitter and angry person.”
Too late, she thought, gnawing the black polish off her nails.
“It just doesn’t make sense. Who kills themselves without a note? Who slits their wrists like that? And what she did to her face—Dad, her eyes!”
“Your mother was a sick woman, Sam,” he protested, as he had dozens of times before. “There’s no other explanation. Only a person who needs help would do something like that. My greatest regret is that I wasn’t able to keep the details of your mother’s passing from you. No one your age should grow up with that kind of thing hanging over them.”
“It just doesn’t make any sense, Dad,” she repeated, trying to ignore that truckload of shit about her mother’s mental health that he had just tried to feed her again. “I mean, your marriage counseling was going well. You had just started loving each other again. And then this. I don’t believe it. I’ll never believe it,” she shouted.
The car descended into a moody silence. By the time they arrived at school, Samantha had scraped all of her nail polish off. Even her father’s tobacco chewing—which, for once, he had not tried to hide—had gone unnoticed and unchallenged.
Somewhere out there was proof that her mother hadn’t killed herself. Somewhere the person who had killed her was still free. If there was a way, Samantha would set everything straight once and for all. That’s what her mother would have wanted. Samantha couldn’t understand why her dad didn’t too.
Chapter 3
“Dorothy!”
Dorothy Olsen looked up with a start from the liver she was slicing into thin strips.
“Alex, you scared the hell out of me! Shame on you.”
Deputy Alex Morgan shook with laughter.
Dorothy removed her glasses and let them dangle around her neck. Rubbing the corners of her eyes, she headed over to the wall to snap the music off.
“I passed by on patrol last night and saw the light still on. Two in the morning’s a bit late even for the medical examiner.”
She plucked what looked like a heart from a scale suspended from the ceiling.
“The Keenans want to know what Grandma died of,” she said dryly. “I think they’re scared it’s hereditary.”
Alex removed his hat and brushed out his blond curly hair. He had celebrated his twenty-sixth birthday last August, but he looked more like twenty-one. Made it a hell of a lot harder to gain respect in a small town like Millingham. Alex let his hat plop on a nearby stool.
Beside it was a stack of cardboard filing boxes. Printed on each was a name and case file.
“What’s all this stuff?” Alex asked, scanning the containers.
Lowery, Elizabeth: 25487.
Dorothy frowned. “No more room downstairs. Not until they finish that space age storage area.” As if on cue, two men with jumpsuits and heavy tool belts strolled past the open autopsy room door.
Ames, Tom: 25463
“Early lunch or another smoke break?”
“Take your pick,” Dorothy said, rolling her eyes.
Crow, Diane: 25437
The box was open, and at once a chill rolled up Alex’s spine as a familiar feeling crept over him. Out of nowhere, a shiny white tub appeared—smooth edges, high glossy finish. Droplets of moisture had formed at the edges. The curtain around it folded back like an accordion, pulled by an unseen hand. The tub was full. The water was red and cloudy. It looked unreal, like tomato soup. A female figure lie face forward in the water, her hair floating listlessly. Her wrists were slit wide open, her body bled so clean her flesh looked nearly translucent.
“Alex!”
He looked up at Dorothy slowly, as though emerging from a long, disturbing dream.
“Are you all right?”
“Diane’s box, it’s still here,” he said. Alex remembered reading her death certificate like it was yesterday. Suicide, it had said. At the time he had swallowed his doubts, but he had wondered if Dorothy had allowed her feelings for Sheriff Crow to cloud her judgment.
Dorothy’s hand went to the glasses hung around her neck. “Are you asking me if I’ve been reviewing the case?”
“I’m not trying to tell you how to do your job, Dorothy.” Their eyes met for a sharp moment, and he turned away. “This whole business about Diane losing her marbles doesn’t sit well with me, and I’ve never tried to hide that. I was there when we found her, don’t forget. Hell, her wrists were slashed to the bone and her eyes were gouged out. Not like any suicide I’ve ever seen.”
“No, it’s wasn’t.” Dorothy looked away too. Down at the box, or at Alex’s feet, he couldn’t tell which.
“I guess I’ve always been surprised at how quickly the decision was made,” he added. “I mean, maybe if we’d spent more time. What if there was something we missed?”
Dorothy’s face grew hard. “Nothing was missed.”
“I’m just—”
“I’m telling you, Alex, nothing was missed.”
The ghostly white light coming from the conference room said otherwise. On the screen was the body of a pale and naked woman in a bathtub, hunched over in a red pool.
A vicious knot formed in his belly from the sight. No matter how many instructional videos you watched, nothing ever really prepared you for the real thing. And it only got worse when it was someone you knew—even when you hated them.
There was a guilty look on Dorothy’s face. “You stubborn bastard! You just don’t know when to quit.”
Alex smiled. “You found something, didn’t you?”
She nodded sadly. “Here, let me show you.”
The projector was humming when Dorothy reached for the remote and clicked to a white sheet with the outline of a woman’s body, front and back, arms and legs splayed. The one medical examiners used to identify important markings on a body. Most of it was blank, except for notes around the wrists, face and others at the top and rear of the neck. Dorothy’s handwriting was characteristically poor for an examiner. Alex could barely make heads or tails of it.
“We never were able to find Diane’s eyes,” Dorothy said thoughtfully.
He nodded curtly, remembering how disturbing her face had looked.
“I know you don’t believe it, but judging from the evidence, she did this herself. The tissue and blood we found under her fingernails all belonged to her.”
Alex craned his head for a closer look.
Dorothy clicked a button and the slide projector went to a close-up of the wrist.
“When a person slits their wrists, the wound is normally quite superficial. But the blood flow can be pretty intense, and a quick laceration, especially with a razor, usually does the job, not to mention the pain.” Dorothy moved to a close-up of the hand and wrist. She aimed a laser pointer toward the screen. “Now look here, where the laceration was made.”
Alex examined the picture and shook his head. “I don’t see anything.”
“It’s difficult to see, but the cut was made at the joint, here. The vast majority of people who slit their wrists cut themselves in the more fleshy area.” She pointed just below the palm on her own hand. “Here or perhaps here.”
“To get the job done.”
“Right. But the lacerations in Diane’s wrists are deep enough that at one point she was sawing into her radius bone.”
Alex winced.
“Here’s the real problem, though. By the time she hit bone, she would have severed enough tendons to render her hand next to useless.”
“She couldn’t have slit her other wrist unless someone else was there to do it for her.”
“Not only that,” Dorothy cut in, “but it looks like the eyes were the first to go.”
Alex shuddered. “Anything from the toxicology you had done?”
Dorothy’s eyes fixed on the screen. “All negative. I can tell you that she smoked and drank, but otherwise she was clean.”
“The razor we found by the tub, could it have done that kind of damage?”
“No, this cut looks like it was done with a thicker blade—an exceptionally sharp hunting knife maybe. But then again, it’s hard to tell, since I don’t have the body anymore or a knife to compare it to. I only have my notes and my memory to go on now.”
Alex tapped a pencil against his forehead, an old schoolboy habit. “Why would she have done this to herself?” he muttered. “I don’t understand.”
“I don’t either. But there’s more.” Dorothy clicked the remote again. “I found some tiny bruising behind her neck. Now, initially I dismissed them since they were consistent with bruising from a vigorous massage.”
“I’m pretty sure the sheriff wasn’t giving Diane any erotic massages. But I guess you never know. He did say they were trying to patch things up near the end.”
“But it gets a whole lot weirder,” Dorothy said. “Look closely at the bruise pattern.”
Alex leaned forward.
“You see that?” she asked.
“A hand print?”
Dorothy slipped her right hand behind her own neck.
Alex spun to face her incredulously. “You saying she held her own head underwater?”
“Looks that way.”
“It’s also possible that someone else was there that night. If so, they would have had to do one bang-up job to make this look like a self-mutilation/suicide. If you’re right, then she knew this person, and knew them well.”
Dorothy turned the light on and gathered the pages from the file. She was wearing the reading glasses with the beaded string she liked so much and for a moment, she looked to Alex like an old lady clearing away her winnings after a good night at bingo. She placed the bulging folder back into the filing cabinet.
Alex fished out a folder labeled death certificate.
Dorothy’s eyes followed him.
“So I guess believing Diane did this to herself is kinda like believing in the magic bullet that killed Kennedy,” Alex said.
“On the whole,” she said, “the case does look like a suicide.” She paused and Alex looked up at her. “But you’re right, there’s certainly room for…doubt.”
He continued watching her, still not satisfied.
“Look,” she said, her eyes narrowing. “Everyone involved, including the sheriff—hell, especially the sheriff—wanted things to be neat and tidy. I guess at the time and under the circumstances, I just wasn’t ready to dig deeper.” She looked up at him sheepishly. “It was a mistake, I admit that now, and it’s haunted me ever since.” She turned away, and her voice took on a different tone. “Alex, I don’t need to explain myself to you.”
“No. No, you don’t.” She was right. He knew of the affair. Hell, everyone did. It had been a long time in the making and had begun shortly before Diane’s death. For a brief moment, a horrible thought crossed his mind. What if Dorothy and Sheriff Crow were both in on it? Maybe he had been watching too much reality TV, although he had to admit it would have been the perfect crime. One of the most powerful men in town, partnered with the only other person who could expose his crime. He swept away the idea. But the thought had left him with a startling realization. If somehow Diane didn’t do this to herself, then the one who did was still out there.
Alex stood, shaky at first, but trying hard not to show it. Dorothy walked him out to his cruiser and into a blinding burst of mid-afternoon sun. She held her clipboard up over her eyes.
“Alex, don’t let Sheriff Crow know what you’re up to.”
He gave her a puzzled look.
“He still doesn’t accept that her passing was anything but a suicide,” she said.
“I might not accept it either if I was the sheriff and my wife was murdered.”
“Just remember,” she said, crossing her arms emphatically, “no matter how much you respect him, no matter how much you look up to him, he’ll never be your friend on this one. You’re alone.”
Alone, Alex thought wryly. Nothing new there.
She walked over and hit him playfully with her clipboard. “Okay, now get outa here before I call the real cops.”
Smiling weakly, he removed his nightstick and slid behind the wheel of his cruiser. Sheriff Crow’s face had melted away, but he couldn’t completely erase the picture of the sheriff’s wife in the bath, slumped over, glaring back at him from two empty sockets. But somehow the residual effect of Dorothy’s slide show seemed far worse. That night, standing by the tub, the whole scene had felt surreal. He replayed the pictures of the bathroom in his head. The slides—some black and white, others stark and blurry—had felt ultra real. And for a reason he couldn’t put his finger on, they felt more vivid lately than they ever had.
Chapter 4
By the time Lysander found his first class, the halls had become a wasteland of crumpled papers and loose candy wrappers. He reached for the door, his pulse pounding in his neck. He was not getting off to a great start to the school year. Not only was he late, but now he had to make a grand entrance in front of everyone. As he stepped inside, thirty-five sets of eyes scanned him up and down. They were whispering, their low murmurs melding with the buzzing fluorescent lights overhead. Mr. Bennett had just finished writing his name on the blackboard, right under English 412. With an unsteady hand, Mr. Bennett flicked chalk dust out of his salt and pepper hair and fumbled through his jumble of papers.
“Mr. Shore, I presume?”
Lysander nodded.
Mr. Bennett pointed impatiently toward the back corner of the room, near an oversize map of Massachusetts.
“Over there, Mr. Shore.”
With the class’s attention glued on him expectantly, Lysander tripped over some smart ass’s outstretched foot and stumbled into the desk in front of him.
The class exploded in a pent-up fit of laughter, no doubt brewing since his big black boots first set foot inside class. Only one girl didn’t join them. He slid uneasily into the seat next to her, blushing and feeling microscopically small. He nodded at her in appreciation. Her large eyes flashed knowingly.
“Looks like you and I are the only Goths within a fifty-mile radius?” he whispered.
Her expression changed. “Goth? No, I’m wiccan.”
“Oh.” He held out his hand. “I’m Lysander.”
She took it, and Lysander was struck by how delicate her hand was.
“I’m Sam,” she said, smiling. “Ignore these assholes. They’ve never seen anyone with taste before.”
A large, sweaty hand landed on Lysander’s shoulder from behind. At the other end of it was what looked like a boy in a man’s body.
Sam leaned over. “That’s Derek.” The man–boy smiled. Lysander returned the gesture, not certain he had any other choice.
Slowly, the laughter died down.
Mr. Bennett stood with his clipboard perched atop his belly. “Now since this is your first day back and since we do have some students who are new to Millingham High, I would like everyone to come up, one at a time, and tell us a little bit about yourselves, your interests, what makes you tick, some of the things you did this summer perhaps.”
The class grew uncharacteristically quiet.
Mr. Bennett fixed his hair again. “Are there any brave souls among us? Or should I pick one of you at random?”
The students eyed one another with uncertainty.
“Fine,” Mr. Bennett said matter-of-factly. “We’ll start with you, then.”
Lysander scanned the room, looking for Mr. Bennett’s victim.
“Come now, Mr. Shore, tell us a bit about yourself.”
Lysander stood on numb legs, and headed toward the front of the classroom, his hands stuffed deep into his pockets to keep them from shaking.
“Name’s Lysander Shore …”
“Louder!” someone shouted from the back.
“My name is Lysander Shore,” he said emphatically. “Moved here from Hayward a week ago. Wasn’t looking to move really, but then again, we didn’t have much choice after some a-hole sent a Molotov cocktail through my bedroom window.”
The class stirred uncomfortably.
He was about to elaborate, but he never got the chance. His eye was caught by a gorgeous blonde seated before him, her hair long and golden and flowing, her skin bronzed from hot summer days by the pool. He stumbled when he saw she was staring right at him, hanging on his every word. His cheeks felt hot. She looked like a goddess.
Beside her, two eyes, like red-hot pokers, were burning into him. They belonged to a guy with a bulky frame and semi-brush cut. He looked like he was all business and very little pleasure. In spite of the heat, he was wearing a sports jacket, his name etched in gold and red lettering: Chad.
“You look at Summer one more time, freak,” Chad growled. “Just one more time, I dare ya!” Next to Chad was a boy, broad and tanned just like him: another extra from CSI: Miami. Except his lips were pulled back in a dark, menacing grin.
Lysander stood frozen. He felt the palms of his hands turn wet, and the drumbeat in his neck thumped wildly.
“Leave him alone, Chad,” the beautiful blonde girl said. She had stuck up for Lysander and his pleasure at what she’d done must have showed on his face because the next thing he knew Chad was on his feet charging.
“Cha—” Lysander never managed to get it all out before something knocked the wind out of him. It was a left hook from Chad, right to the gut and a matching crack in the face so the lesson was learned. Lysander crumpled to his feet, hitting his head on the dusty, cool floor. He could see dust bunnies rolling around under Mr. Bennett’s desk.
The next thing he knew Samantha was screaming bloody murder. From the corner of his swelling eye, Derek was grappling with Chad. A crowd had gathered around Chad versus the giant boy. Mr. Bennett nudged between them to break it up. A skinny, awkward kid with a healthy dose of acne bent down and helped Lysander off the floor. Chad reached out a hand to grab him, but Derek blocked the move and sent him tumbling over a row of desks. Chad was about to get what he had coming to him and Lysander wanted to be there to cheer Derek on, but Lysander was quickly whisked away. Lysander hadn’t said more than two words to either Chad or Derek and it seemed more than enough for one to want him dead and the other to save his life.
***
Lysander awoke later that afternoon looking into a pair of yellow eyes. His new cat, Necra, perched on his chest.
“Get off, Nec,” he groaned, feeling too sluggish to move her himself.
The cat hissed.
Lysander’s eyes snapped open.
Necra hissed again. Her lips peeled back, unsheathing a mouthful of needle-sharp teeth.
“What’s wrong girl?” A staggering fear settled over him. His arms were under the covers, trapped. If she wanted to, the cat could flick one of her paws and blind him. He had never seen her behave like this before. They remained eye to eye for what felt like an eternity. Then Lysander blinked and Necra meowed, almost to say “you lose” and then darted off.
Lysander lay in bed, trying to convince himself to get up, when he heard his mother bellowing after him from downstairs. He ignored her for a second, and then grew curious. Had someone come over? Not Peter Hume, he hoped. No, the voice downstairs sounded deep and friendly and touched with a southern drawl. He dressed quickly to see who it was. Downstairs, he found his mother by the entrance, her face lit with a great big smile. A giggle escaped her lips, and the sound of it startled Lysander.
The man at the door looked old and soft. The first thought that came to Lysander was that he looked like Elmer Fudd.
He lifted his head and smiled at Lysander. Deep lines formed at the corners of his mouth and eyes.
“Lysander, this is our neighbor, Reverend…oh, I’m so sorry, I’ve forgotten your name.”
“Oh, don’t be. It’s Small …Reverend Nathaniel Small of the Bethlehem Baptist Church. You must be Lysander.” Light from outside danced off what looked like a silver ring on Reverend Small’s hand. In the center was the engraving of a fish. The same one Lysander had seen on so many bumper stickers. How did they go again?
Real men love Jesus
Are you following Jesus this close?
This fish won’t fry, will you?
“I run a small church down on Tuslow. You folks may have seen it. Looks more like a grocery store than it does a church.”
His mother nodded. “I know it. By the fire station.”
“That’s her,” Small said and flashed a set of mostly straight teeth. “We used to have a big old beauty three streets over, but not two years ago she burned right to the ground. ‘Lectrical fire.” He seemed to pause to consider this. “Would be awfully great to see you nice people down there on Sunday, so long as there aren’t other matters pressing you too hard.” He peered in at the packing boxes piled in the living room.
Reverend Small was still smiling when he withdrew a gold pocket watch. He snapped the lid open and gasped at the time.
“Now I’d be lying if I told you nice folks I wasn’t partially here on business. Mrs. Grady’s dog, from down the street, went off again last night after a raccoon or somethin’ and we haven’t seen him since. He’s one of them husky dogs, about yay high, white coat. You folks seen him ‘round?”
“No, we haven’t,” his mother said, concerned. “But we’ll sure keep an eye out.”
The reverend’s gaze fixed on Lysander’s black eye. “I hope you didn’t let anyone get the better of you there, son.”
His mother slid an arm around him and pulled him closer. “Lysander had a rough first day at school, that’s all. You know how kids are.”
The reverend smiled knowingly. “Regretfully, I have no children of my own, but our congregation is nearly burstin’ with ‘em. Most go to the local high school. So chances are good, young man, that you might just know one or two of ‘em.”
Reverend Small’s eyes flicked over his mother’s stomach. He grinned sheepishly. “My mother used to tell me that I was bolder than the print on the Sunday Times, so I hope you’ll forgive me, but I see you have a little one well on the way.”
His mother blushed, cupping the bulge in her tummy. “Seven months,” she said proudly.
“And what a beautiful little girl I’m sure she’ll be.”
Lysander’s mother nodded dreamily. “Yes, she will.”
The two of them burst into a gale of laugher that made the reverend’s face turn the color of a ripe tomato.
As he bid God bless and turned to leave—this time for real—Lysander couldn’t help thinking about something the old man had said, about there being other kids at church.
If that were true, and not a ploy to lure unsuspecting victims to Sunday service, there was a chance that Summer might be there as well. At the very least, it was worth a shot.
Chapter 5
When Lysander opened the door he found a panicked figure before him. Sam’s eyes were wide with fear and her chest was heaving in greedy gulps of air. Without saying a word, she led him around the side of the house. Crouched down behind a thicket was Derek, the one in Mr. Bennett’s class who had given Chad a taste of his own medicine. His hands and fingernails were stained by what looked like motor oil or tar or…blood? Lysander took a quick step back.
“What happened?”
“Alex, one of my dad’s deputies, tried to take Derek in on a parole violation. When Alex tried to push me aside, Derek knocked him out. Look, can you help us? Her hands were clasped in front of her, pleading.
He owed Derek. Owed him big time.
“Yeah, of course. You wanna stay in my garage or—”
“No, no,” Samantha said impatiently. “We have a place, an old house. We just need to borrow some stuff from you. I couldn’t think of anyone else, and we were already on our way here to see if you were okay.”
“What do you need?”
“Food, a sleeping bag, light …”
“All right,” he said and turned.
“Lysander,” she whispered, “please hurry. We don’t have long.”
Lysander’s heart was beating a fierce racket as he went back inside to gather the things Sam had asked for. If you included his first shining day at school, he had known Derek for a grand total of ten minutes. But already both he and Sam had stood up for him when he was in trouble. That had to count for something.
***
It was drizzling when they arrived. The house looked old and tired, imprisoned by the weeds and the overgrowth. Over the years a thick blanket of moss had crept up its walls, until the place didn’t look like a house so much as it did a living being. In the front yard, a tall pine resembled a thick and gnarled torso, its leafy branches brushing the roof. One of them intruded through a broken window. Lysander guessed the house was at least fifty years old, maybe even a hundred.
The front door was protected by a gaping hole in what used to be the porch. A yellow ribbon was strung across the door warning all trespassers that the premises were off limits. To rip that yellow tape down and traipse in would be a clear signal to the cops that someone was inside. Might as well plop a sign out front:
Dear Pigs ...
We’ve broken in, come get us.
Signed,
The Dumbasses
Samantha led them around the side of the house to a broken window. Below it was a sad-looking bush, its leaves shriveled and brown. She tossed the bush aside. Behind it, Lysander saw a small crate propped against the wall—a makeshift step ladder.
They slipped in through the window, one at a time.
Inside was the unmistakable odor of rotting wood. In Hayward, Lysander had been in abandoned houses before, but none this old or strong smelling.
“Place has gone to the shits,” Derek noted astutely as he tiptoed around, testing how strong the floors were.
“Does it matter?” Samantha replied, her arms folded over her chest. “You’re not looking to buy the place. Just lay low for a few weeks till it all blows over. Unless, that is, you want to turn yourself in.”
Derek threw Samantha a sharp look.
The floorboards moaned under the added weight as the three came to a large foyer. The smell of old wood was stronger here.
A house like this must be teeming with history, he thought.
Lysander’s gaze was drawn to the spiraling staircase. He imagined a host of fancy party guests; well-to-do ladies and gentlemen clad in tuxedos and evening dresses drinking martinis. He saw streamers and signs that read: “Victory Europe” and another “Victory Japan.” He blinked, and the image was gone. That was weird, he thought.
The second room beyond the front foyer was the most intact. It had a floor that was relatively dry, and three of its four windows were still intact. On the opposing wall was an imprint from where a desk once stood. Inside it a broken chair balanced against the wall on its one remaining leg. Derek dropped the duffel bag. It clanked when it hit the floor and he sprang with surprise at the noise. He unpacked excitedly, pulling out a wad of crumpled comic books and a shiny green sleeping bag, and tossed them both aside. He came to an old lantern and examined it. His lips pursed as he whistled his approval. “Wow, what antique store you get this beauty from? Does it work?”
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