Hap skirts past Paul, seeing Officer Dylan’s car through the shop’s windows.
“Quitting on me?” Paul musters a smile. He really must be sick; his hair is growing long and turning grey. He seems thinner, too, particularly around his stubble-tattered cheekbones. A few days ago, Hap saw Paul come stumbling out of one of the guest rooms, looking as if he had ducked in to take a nap. His fly was down, and he greeted Hap with an awkward mutter that was half choked out by a burp while they both avoided eye contact and went their separate ways.
“I’m just, uh…,” Hap explains himself.
Paul seems to wince for a second before crossing his arms and shrugging. “Day off is a day off then, huh? Good luck.” Paul, avoiding eye contact, takes a deep sigh, and his mouth seems to tremble for a moment as he brushes past Hap. That guy must be dying or getting a divorce or something.
Hap blanks out for a second when he gets to Dylan’s car, wondering whether he should get into the back seat or not, but Dylan laughs, jerking a thumb over to his passenger seat. “No shit from the boss?” Dylan asks, turning down the local rock station. Hap shakes his head, adjusting his bag by his feet. He rejects another offer for coffee, giving a polite smile when Officer Dylan jokes about how, with this weather, you could easily go for both iced or hot coffee. When they pull away from the coffee shop and the night-swallowed shadow of the Miskatonic, Hap is not sure how to begin talking without asking too many questions.
“So what’d you find that’s so weird?” Hap kills whatever comfortable pretense Dylan’s trying to establish. He isn’t a kid. He gets to the point and shows how serious he is.
“Better yet, what didn’t I find, from the way the investigation was filed to the way it was recorded? It went straight to the papers like a vandalism job that nobody is going to bother following up on. The main guy assigned to the case had three other unrelated assignments lined up before and after your girlfriend went missing. It’s like, uh, what’s it called? I saw a Twilight Zone episode once where everybody keeps forgetting about this guy the second they turn their heads away from him; that’s sort of like what has been going on. I’m showing you a house the investigator marked in his notes. It doesn’t make any sense. I couldn’t get ahold of him, but you’ll see for yourself when we get there. You tell me if it makes any sense.”
“I don’t know anything. The Miskatonic is weird. It’s connected. There’s this symbol, this—”
Officer Dylan cuts him off. “It’s good you’re working there,” Officer Dylan says as they pull onto the worst strip of highway in Providence, where four lanes merge onto one, making Hap thankful he’s not the one driving. Dylan’s in control; it’s buddy cop movie time. “That place is ground zero, right? Yeah, you’ll be my inside man. You keep working there. This could all work out.”
The orange glow of Providence’s streetlights is taking over the sun’s job once the hills of the horizon eat it up.
“One thing I’m thinking, though, is that these murders—you’ve heard about the murders, right? These start up right around the time she’s gone. Four of ‘em. That’s about as much as Jack the Ripper now, isn’t it? Your girlfriend disappears before the biggest, ugliest thing to hit Rhode Island since them hurricanes and the frigging Prohibition and King Philip’s War.”
“There’s stuff; there’s shit that just plain stinks of coincidence around here, like everything about the Miskatonic.” Hap unintentionally gets Dylan to laugh, and Hap’s face is going red. He can’t go telling a cop the Miskatonic is his chief suspect because it’s allegedly haunted. It being where Tiff was seen last should be good enough.
“Hate to tell you, but my theory is that maybe our guy works there. See, this lunatic’s only taken out men so far, or at least we’ve only found the bodies of men. He’s taking their eyes, see, maybe in some kind of perverted way. I don’t want this to be true, I don’t, but wouldn’t it fit if this nut has something to do with women too? You’re right about the coincidence, though. We’re going to figure this out.”
Dylan, who must not be on active duty, rubs a finger over his GPS monitor, turning the screen off as they take an exit into North Providence, a more residential area than the rest of the city. It still has its share of fun restaurants and a big craft beer store called Nicki’s that all the hipster kids are always gushing about.
“Wait till you see what’s in this place. Then we play ball, come up with a plan, okay?”
Officer Dylan’s driving them through a dizzying nexus of neighborhoods. The streets are full of potholes like there’s a meteor shower that has been eating away at the foundations of society. Hap’s sense of direction soon becomes scrambled. He catches the sloppy graffiti word “purity” in white on a stop sign, and its meaning could be infinite.
There’s a fence around the crumbling brick building Officer Dylan brings him to. The place is claimed by a forest of weeds. The closest streetlight is the block over, only serving to soak the ruins in more shadow. Officer Dylan gets to use a cool and sleek, high-powered flashlight. He gives Hap a dorky, battery-operated lantern. Dylan puts his hand on his belt, sliding his palm over his holster as he casts a look Hap’s way. “Stay behind me. Hopefully, nobody’s in here that we have to worry about.”
“Are these the projects?” Hap asks.
“You’re a country kid, huh? Projects are government housing, usually big buildings that look like crappy apartments, which they basically are. People care about the projects, believe it or not. Nobody cares about this place. Junkies aren’t known for their sentiment, though.”
There’s graffiti scattered over the ruins. There are no seven-pointed spiraling stars, just the typical, random squiggles. The front door has a sprawling mess of yellow rippling across it like a welcome sign for decrepitude.
There’s a squeal of tires somewhere in the distance as Officer Dylan cautiously pushes inside the abandoned home, or whatever it once was. A heavy silence clings to the ruined street. Would even a homeless person stay somewhere like this? How does a place on the edge of the city get this empty?
“So, what’s in here?” Hap follows Dylan into a stuffy hallway. This was some kind of business. Something smells horrible, like piss and maybe sour milk. It’s always hard to place a smell. Hap holds his lantern by his side just so he doesn’t step on anything foul. Dylan’s light is good enough to peel back the majority of shadows in their way. There’s some kind of waiting room with a cluster of metal chairs hugging the walls. A random poster of a family of four playing with a dog in the grass probably means it was some kind of veterinary clinic.
“Take a look at this, and you tell me.”
Dylan pulls on a door that’s slightly stuck, and the sudden eruption of sound it makes gets Hap’s heart pumping. If Dylan weren’t here with a gun and a uniform—well, how did Hap manage to explore that empty house on the hill at night alone? That primitive childhood fear of the dark and leering closets and hallway corners is reborn here. Alcohol and anger are more useful than Hap ever imagined.
Hap follows where Dylan’s pointing his flashlight; it’s some kind of wide, open room with tiled walls, scattered tables, and what looks like a refrigerator tucked into a corner. Front and center is a hole in the cement floor—a private root cellar, from before this place was a vet clinic. Or does it lead to some kind of tunnel?
Hap leers over the open, square hole. It’s only a couple of feet deep, but there is a thick stink coming from within. Heavy and wet, almost like low tide, but more particular. Is this what rot smells like? There’s dirt below, framing a white something. A piece of paper, a picture. He kneels down, tilting his head and the lantern over the hole. The picture becomes clear. Tiffany’s face, a selfie from her Facebook profile. Somebody printed it out on a printer running out of ink, and…the skin on the back of Hap’s neck prickles as he becomes aware of Officer Dylan standing over him.
Hap glances to his left, and in the shadow of
the flashlight, there is a stick, an arm—no, a gun, pointing at him while he kneels. Hap can’t stop himself from trembling.
“What are you...?” If Hap turns around now, he’ll look down the barrel of a gun, and then there will be a flash. Maybe the sensation of the bullet entering his head will only be a distant throb. Hap raises his hands in the air and turns his head slightly, just so he can see Officer Dylan’s shoes and the stance he’s in, with both hands forming over the weapon now. There is a gun, a gun, pointed at him. The tears run rampant down Hap’s cheeks, dripping into the hole in the ground.
“It’s all right. You see her down there? She’s as good as dead. Them, uh, them people? You’re their first mistake, ever. I’ve never had to do this before. They’re so in control. It’s always so neat, and this is fucking me up. They’re supposed to be neat; they’ve always been so neat. What if they kill my wife? I want you to know….” Officer Dylan’s getting choked up. He won’t do it…he can’t.
“Please…please, look. We’re on the same side. We….” Hap is finding it difficult to talk. His mouth is trembling too much, and he might just bite off his own tongue.
“You’re saving her. You’re saving a woman, my woman. Think of it like that, like it makes up for your girl, yeah?” Officer Dylan says. Hap somehow tunes into it: the electricity that he never knew percolated in the air before a murder.
Something metallic skitters along a wall, followed by the solid clop of a shoe striking concrete. Hap turns, mirroring Officer Dylan, who’s turning to look over his own shoulder, his gun clenched in one hand. Before Hap can even comprehend the gun that was just aimed at him, he realizes there is someone else in the room. There’s a flash of a thick beard and crazed eyes before the tall and skinny intruder collides with Officer Dylan. In the twirling artificial light, the two men begin to fumble for control of the gun.
A stray foot from the writhing mess of colliding men strikes Hap in the ribs, and he’s falling, tumbling into the hatch as his lantern rolls away on the floor above. Falling head first, the side of Hap’s face scrunches into the dirt. Amidst thrashing on the floor and the grunts of wild animals with their existence at stake, Hap twists and rights himself out of the hole. His foot strikes against something plastic and soft. There’s a black bag and the rough impression of a motionless somebody inside. The corpse is heavyset—it’s not Tiff. The lights being kicked from above reveal a couple of other bagged bodies in the shadow. Plunged back into the dark, Hap stretches to free himself from the crawl space.
A rolling flashlight and the kicked over lamp give life to a tall man climbing on top of Officer Dylan. There’s a gleaming knife in the intruder’s hands. The gun’s nowhere in sight as Hap pulls himself from the crawlspace in time to see the knife’s blade sink down into Officer Dylan’s chest. What follows is a spastic frenzy, as that dark knife is thrust in and out of the wailing cop’s stomach before his cries gurgle off. There is only one way out of here, and Hap ignores his throbbing ankle as he rushes toward the open doorway. A hand latches around that same ankle, and he falls, cracking his chin against the cement as pain and blood flood his mouth.
Hap’s rolled onto his back; the tall man crawls over him, straddling Hap’s waist with a gleaming sharp something clenched in a fist. A hand grabs Hap’s throbbing jaw. He whines and tries to thrash out with his hands, but the gaunt and bearded face is thrust into his as the man leans over him. His beard is patchy and uneven in spots. He jabs fingers into Hap’s face and pulls his eyelids open, one after another before he twists Hap’s head left and right, looking him over before lightly smacking the side of his face with the broad side of the sticky, warm knife. The killer makes a sucking sound with his teeth. “You run along now, my little mad Arab. I’ll catch up. His friends will be coming.” The broad side of the knife smacks against Hap’s cheek once more, and a drop of blood stings his eye. The tall man clambers off him and hunches back over Officer Dylan’s corpse. Hap’s clawing at his cheeks, trying to clear his face of Dylan’s blood, wondering about that body in a bag at the bottom of that crawlspace. Was that going to be him? Tiff wasn’t down there.
In the hallway, Hap trips over another corpse. The killer was disturbed while hiding another body. From the vague outline, Hap can tell that it’s a woman, and through the pale glow of the streetlights outside, he can see that while roughly as tall as Tiff, the dead woman has black hair and is skinnier, more bone than flesh; in this moment where he really should be running, that’s good enough for Hap. Not her. He checks the corpse off his list without a second thought.
Outside he passes by the familiar stop sign with purity painted over its command, and he’s picking a direction and running, despite the burning in his lungs. He can just barely see the downtown lights from here.
He’s made it. Nobody’s chasing him. Does he call the cops? Yes, that’s what they tell you, right? Hap pulls out his cell phone, perking his ears up at distant sirens from the direction he just left. Hap remembers the brief squawk of Officer Dylan’s walkie-talkie. He was showing Hap bodies and a picture. He was showing him something any other sane cop would have reported to a hundred other people before showing some college kid. Hap really was going to get shot in the back of the head in that empty clinic on that lonely street.
He runs through a more residential neighborhood. Though the houses are still in various states of disarray, there is still a sense of life here. TVs flicker beyond curtainless front windows, and porch lights illuminate children’s bikes and beat-up family cars. Hap probably still has blood all over his face. The sound of an approaching car doesn’t quite register in Hap’s head before he turns around and sees that it has no headlights on. An old Cadillac, piloted by the tall man.
Long-limbed, his face is even more ghoulish under the streetlight, and his hair is short, despite his beard. In spite of his visage, there is a semblance of upkeep to him, even with his unbuttoned shirt exposing his bare, tattoo-scrawled chest. Hap barely registers a “No, wait, hey,” before he’s grabbed and hauled away from the closest home with a familiar glowing TV shimmering in a living room. Faces are pressing up against the glass of the house, children’s faces, with eyes growing wide, as the boogey man drags Hap kicking and screaming to his car. Hap’s phone slips from his hands as he’s thrown against an unforgiving metal door, and the mad murderer stomps his foot down, extinguishing the glow of his Apple product with a simplistic popping as plastic and glass meet the heel of a boot.
Hap is knocked to the asphalt by the swinging passenger door. Before he can catch his bearings, his hands are clicking together behind his back. Did the tall man steal Officer Dylan’s cuffs? Hap is rolled over onto his back, and that same knife, wiped clean this time and smelling of rubbing alcohol, is under Hap’s chin. On the tall man’s wrist, there is the strangest tattoo of a black vertical line with three slashes across the top and two across the bottom, almost resembling a tree branch or the stems of a leaf.
“I cut you open, will stars pour outta you?” The killer asks. It sounds like an honest question.
“No, no,” Hap shakes his head, playing along with the madness as the tall man picks him up by the front of his Sublime shirt, and he’s thin but strong, aided by his height and weight. He’s so strong that he tosses Hap effortlessly into the front seat of his car. It’s a Cadillac; Hap recognizes the logo on the dash. Miraculously, that knife hasn’t entered his throat.
“Poor boy in blue.” The tall man climbs into his seat and immediately grabs Hap by the neck and pulls him toward his lap, holding his head by the gearshift. The knife is against his throat, lightly, as the man’s grip loosens and the car rumbles to life as they pull away, and the Caddie’s opening up, doubling the speed limit. “Stay still now, ‘til I know whether to open you up or not.”
“Please, I—” Hap begins.
“Police won’t be a bother. They’re going to help me figure you. If they look for a mad Arab, I’ll know what they think of yo
u. Moon Shack has so few children, but you’re old enough. You call it home, the Moon Shack?” The tall man’s voice is cracking as if he doesn’t talk much. Is this the killer, The Eye Doctor? Is he going to take Hap’s eyes?
“No, I don’t. I don’t understand what you mean.” Hap’s legs are cramping, pressing against the passenger door, and he can’t kick or cause a scene. He could try and lash out and hit the gearshift, but how would that save his neck?
“No, no, they all say. No Moon Shack. No faith, no home, no Else. No, just them, just they hobbies, they own private killins’. So I ask, why so many? Why so many of them here, but no Moon Shack? That’s when they cryin’, if they can, and I see what they see, and then they see no more. Cop got a gun to you. I think, very odd that they hurt they own, but I can’t be sure about you.”
“Look, I…. Look….” Hap realizes that he’s babbling and on the brink of spouting more of it. There is only one fact that sums him up. “They took my girlfriend,” he says clearly. “From the Miskatonic.” Is there a “they” that eye doctor is not a part of? The tall man starts chuckling, which soon swells into deep, goon-like laughter. Then there’s silence, and to keep talking probably isn’t best.
Officer Dylan mentioned he had a wife. Did she know what he was? Is she even real? Oh god, Dylan had a gun to his head…now Hap is with the man who put a knife through that cop’s throat.
Moon Regardless Page 12
