Passover

by Aphrodite Anagnost

  Passover

  by Aphrodite Anagnost & Robert P. Arthur

  © Copyright 2015 Aphrodite Anagnost & Robert P. Arthur

  ISBN 978-1-940192-93-2

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other – except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior written permission of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. The characters are both actual and fictitious. With the exception of verified historical events and persons, all incidents, descriptions, dialogue and opinions expressed are the products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.

  Published by

  210 60th Street

  Virginia Beach, VA 23451

  212-574-7939

  www.koehlerbooks.com

  Table of Contents

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  45

  Sheriff Phil Wise took a light drag, flicked his cigarette, and with a heavy boot heel ground it out on the gray, painted boards of the front porch at 23 Burnt Chestnut Road. His Surefire flashlight flickered. Mist descended, enveloping the gables and fretwork of a tiny village nestled between the ocean and the Chesapeake Bay—a remote neck hidden on the Delmarva Peninsula. The sheriff inhaled again and frowned. Burnt carbon must have coalesced over some fire pit and migrated down the road, picking up dew from sodden oaks and maples.

  Wise’s deputy, John Crockett, unbuttoned his yellow rain slicker and stepped onto the porch, mumbling curses as he bumped one knee on a cast-iron rendering pot. He glanced over his shoulder as though something were following. He reached into the coat and pulled out a dog-eared copy of the Dalai Lama’s Little Book of Wisdom. He patted it, then returned the slim volume to his pocket.

  “Good read?” said Wise.

  “Helps turn off the internal monologue.” The deputy pointed to his head.

  The sheriff insisted on going back to the houses of both H.V. Ewell and Revel Petty every few days to re-examine the evidence. Ewell’s home was the first scene of a series of possibly serial murders that had resulted in an exodus from Zebulon, Virginia’s community of three–hundred souls. After nine visits, he still feared he’d missed some crucial clue.

  “Want me to go in?” said Crockett, sounding ready to recant as soon as the offer had passed his lips.

  The 1930s clapboard foursquare was mounted on a dozen or so new brick pillars. Like other farm houses in Zebulon, it rose two stories and had four sash windows upstairs, a clear transom above the entry, and two groups of three windows on the ground floor. The heavy green front door had a huge frosted glass oval. The porch was cluttered by bicycle parts, tires, chains, and assorted hand tools. A small sign screwed into the wall beside the front door read Ewell’s Bicycle and Small Engine Repair.

  “Guess you oughta come. Take a look around. It’s your post, Johnny.” The sheriff unclipped a saucer-sized ring of keys from his belt.

  “Reckon I oughta keep watch out here.” Crocket unzipped his jacket, then zipped it up again.

  “Suit yourself,” said the sheriff, sorting through the keys.

  Crockett studied his own long fingers as if they belonged on someone else. “Strangest spring ever. Must be that global warmin’. Wouldn’t be surprised if we saw snow on Easter.”

  Wise gazed at the copper moon, almost full, but blurred by moisture and Magnolia leaves drooping under dew. It was like the tropical moon of a rainforest.

  “Be a big fat one tonight,” Crockett said. When Wise threw him a puzzled look, he added, “Full moon with a face like a clock in a hall.”

  “Don’t tell me about fat moons,” said the sheriff.

  Using an embroidered handkerchief, Wise wiped away the sweat that had popped out on his forehead, then slipped the carefully folded cloth in his back pocket. No sooner had he tucked it in, than moisture beaded his brow again. His eyebrows felt like icy caterpillars.

  He pulled down the crime-scene tape that sealed the door. “Post out here to cover my behind. I’ll go on in and ruminate about the parlor some more.”

  A grackle dove out of the night sky onto the porch. The deputy flipped his hat to shoo it away. “Hsst! Get outta here, you vicious little bastard.”

  “You’ll stay in fine fettle right here,” said the sheriff. “Probably till morning anyway.” The deputy frowned. “That’s some funny joke, Sheriff.”

  “Yet you ain’t laughing, Crockett.” Wise stared down at his chubby hand, illuminated by the Surefire as he turned the key in the lock. As was his habit, he fortified himself to enter the crime scene by muttering under his breath, “Sweet Jesus, here I come.”

  He crossed the threshold and slapped at the wall until he found the light switch. He turned his flashlight off and slid it back into his belt, then checked for the Glock 22 in his holster. The fireplace was empty but the air still smelled of burnt cedar. Everything looked the same as it looked on the night of the first murder. He didn’t know why he felt drawn toward the site again and again. Or what he might be looking for. In most cases, crime scenes suggested obvious events, especially when there’d been a violent death. Possibilities seemed endless. But in this case all explanations seemed stranger than the crime scene itself.

  He crossed to his usual seat, a worn velvet wingback near the door, and sat. The chair exhaled as he settled on its cushion. It let out a held breath.

  Each piece of furniture had been pulled away from the walls as if by enormous magnets, then apparently levitated and set down again at random. No scuffs, no drag marks on the furniture, walls, or floor. No signs of damage whatsoever. The armoire that held the television had turned its back on the sofa that had shifted its legs off the carpet that had been rolled up like a fat wool cigar. The sofa now faced the wall. The end tables were stacked like children’s blocks, and the framed pictures all hung catawampus. A planter’s desk had been laid flat on its back, like a corpse, doors closed tight in its frames, glass unbroken. The two floor lamps—unplugged, stripped of shades—had migrated to the kitchen. In the midst of all this jumbled furniture a grandfather clock stood tall and straight like a cop directing traffic. It was as if the furnishings, all blind, had walked to random places and parked themselves—illegally.

  The sheriff studied the hole in the middle of the pine floor. The three-foot opening had penetrated even the sub floor, leaving an eerie portal to the crawl space below. The edges were smooth, burnished, and round, as if the object that had broken through had whittled, sanded, and charred them. No other sign of damage to the house, no scatterings of books, or papers, or clothes. Only ash stains and blotches of blood spread like purple bruises on the walls. And there had been no robbery.

  Near his feet lay a photograph of H.V. Ewell and his sister and parents, standing in their Sunday best in a black and white row framed by gold. Something about the picture itself stirred i
n the edges of his mind. Why? He didn’t know.

  Two full moons past, the house had been lit like a Jack-O-Lantern from within, grinning brilliantly in the dark. Finally, Mathew Harper, the neighborhood pharmacist, had called the sheriff by cell phone to report, “Mr. Ewell left his front door and all the windows open. The place was lit up like someone was having a Halloween party. Didn’t look right,” Harper had said, “So I went on in.”

  The pharmacist had found Ewell skewered by the shaft of the stop sign from a nearby intersection. The body was dangling two feet below the cast-iron chandelier made by the blacksmith who’d built the house in 1935. Loops of bicycle chain coiled like a segmented snake around the head of the stop sign and wrapped the outstretched arms of the chandelier.

  The victim had been kababbed through the lower back and out the belly like a spear-gunned grouper. He’d drooped there, head and limbs hanging. Strings of bowel draped with omental fat had escaped the torn abdomen, stomach spilling fragments of lamb chops, cabbage, and un-chewed peas. Blood had splattered the floor beneath him. Judging by the semicircular pattern, the medical examiner, Dr. Rachel Shelton, had deducted that before H.V. Ewell died, his aorta had been punctured. Swinging in a slow arc, Ewell’s body had sprayed the wall like a hose.

  When Wise finally left the house again, the first touches of dawn were patrolling, probing the closed, locked windows. Zebulon, as usual this early, lay quiet. The town’s painted Victorians, some predating the Civil War, flaunted sweeping gingerbread-trimmed porches in their drowsy, wet sleep.

  Wise glanced at his watch and walked into the front yard, nodding as he passed his deputy. Still as marble, Crockett now stood under a bare crape myrtle, cradling his rifle under one arm. He opened his book. Pink dawn illuminated the pages as he read, moving his lips.

  “Don’t go droppin’ things, Johnny,” said the sheriff. “You look like a gold miner’s pack donkey.”

  “Sheriff Wise,” Crocket said. “Who do you think it is we’re after?”$

  “Hell if I know. Somethin’ that kills people, Johnny.” The sheriff blew into the early morning air to see whether it was cold enough to condense his breath. It wasn’t…yet. “You wait right here, Deputy. If it shows up while I’m gone, shoot it. Shoot the fuck out of it.”

  “It?” said Crockett, frowning.

  The sheriff nodded. “I’m not ruling anything out.”

  Dr. Rachel Shelton opened her eyes at cockcrow. Her first thought was of the murderer who’d been heading east up Burnt Chestnut, one house at a time. Now it was their turn. When she raised her head, the light through the wavy glass of the window cast a mirage of a ghostly field of Mexican sunflowers across her pillowcase.

  She sat upright in bed, wearing flannel pajamas spotted with yellow ducks. Dew clung to the bedroom windows. The panes glowed, casting scintillating spots on the Winchester rifle that lay on the bureau, atop a pile of last week’s newspapers, all filled with bad news.

  She swung her legs over and touched her feet to the cool floor, then changed her mind, lying back and pulling the white damask duvet out of its hospital corners and over her head. What if something lay under the bed, waiting to nip her ankles and suck her blood? She shut her eyes and made her body stiff to stop trembling.

  Critical hospital patients determined to live, despite a poor prognosis, at times tented blankets over their heads. As a cardiologist at the local hospital and medical examiner for the island, she referred to self-shrouding as the “Anti-scythe Sign.” She was always happy to see it. This time, she thought, I’ll try it myself.

  Her husband lay sleeping, a felled oak beside her. She dug a knuckle into one of his armpits. Dave squirmed. She’d expected him to already be up when she woke. Since he wasn’t—well, there’d better be a damned good reason. There were windows and doors to recheck—just in case—and an official meeting at six forty-five. The sheriff would knock a signal in Morse code to announce himself.

  Aside from Dave’s even breathing, there was no sound of human habitation. Not a peep from the boys’ bedrooms, only the hum from the water pump, which meant the animals must be drinking. From the stables drifted the whistles and tut-tutting of birds—guinea fowl, peacocks, roosters, geese, and drakes.

  If anything happened downstairs now, no one would be ready. She would not. Neither would Dave, and certainly not the boys. By the time they heard the tinkle of smashed glass, or the clang of a fallen candlestick, it would be too late. Before they leapt up and got to their rifles, there’d be heavy steps on the stairs. The rush of an intruder across the first landing, then his turning to run up the next shorter flight. Her family might as well be dead already.

  First Ewell, then Petty. She’d poured over their cases, finding patterns. She poked her head from under the duvet. “Dave,” she whispered.

  He grinned in his sleep. His nostrils twitched. What the hell is he thinking of—daisies? He should be thinking of where best to crouch with a rifle. She pressed her mouth right up to his ear and with clenched teeth, tugged at a hair. He failed to stir. Last night’s Ivory soap residue and baby powder still lingered on his neck.

  Sunlight around her dropped in oppressive layers. “Dave.”

  His lids slid up. Rachel stared into his drowsy brown eyes. She wanted to shake him, make him get up, fetch their rifles, bullets, spare keys, pepper spray. There was something gravely, fatally wrong. She wanted him to fix it.

  The horses would be running the fence line, wheeling in the low-cropped fields, then galloping back to their stalls. The deputies from the sheriff’s office would be sitting grumpy at their posts, impatient for coffee. The temperature would be fifty, humidity one hundred percent according to Weather.com. The boys should get out of their beds before they died in them. Zack and Leo should dress and then, if they wanted to, go back to sleep in their clothes.

  “God, I’m going to throw up,” she groaned. A migraine was creeping up her neck, into one eye. Warped light from the window zigzagged over Dave in rainbow bands and played about the room. She imagined Zack and Leo sprawled in their beds, melting. “Dave, check on the boys.”

  She put her feet on the dry oak floor and pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. “Okay. Let’s go.” He followed her down the hallway as she twisted her long brown hair into a knot. Rachel heard him patter off to the boys’ rooms and patter back. She crossed the marble threshold of the bathroom and steadied herself against the rim of the sink.

  “They’re fine,” he said. He watched her lift the toilet seat, fold down onto her knees and vomit. “They’re still sleeping. Let them.”

  Finished, she sat on the edge of the bathtub, watching his reflection in the mirror above the sink. Sweat coated her cheeks. She mopped it with a towel and blew a strand of moist hair from her eyes. Then stood and leaned against his trunk-like shoulder. “Wish we’d sent them away.” She swished her mouth with peroxide and loaded up the electric toothbrush.

  He looked down and sighed. He pulled a face cloth off the rack, moistened it under cool water and wiped her neck.

  “It wouldn’t have been any safer,” she said. “Maybe not even as safe, but I wish they weren’t here. We could’ve hid them, and been more careful. We’d be thinking clearer if they weren’t here worrying us.”

  “The Harper children.” He rubbed the five days of shadow on his chin. “They were sent to Sharpsburg and look what happened.”

  “I don’t want to think about them anymore!” Her hands were shaking when she put down the towel.

  “I don’t know what to say to comfort you,” Dave sighed. “In the past three months, I…I…Who knows what else to do? I can’t come up with anything else—but this will be the last day of it. After today we won’t have to worry anymore.”

  “Are you sure?” She sat back down on the edge of the enamel bathtub.

  “Yes. I am.” His voice became insistent. “Absolutely.” The Russian blue, Nijinsky, coiled around his legs and purred. Dave turned and reached down to stroke him. “There�
�s been a definite pattern, as you say. When it’s broken, the terror will end. I’m not the only one who thinks so.”

  “What does the sheriff say?”

  “Same thing. It’ll all be over this time tomorrow.”

  “Okay.” She stood and closed the door, shutting him out.

  It’d been his idea to move from California to the small village of Zebulon. He’d found a brick Georgian with stables and a pasture behind it on Burnt Chestnut, the only paved street in town. Rachel had approved, sure, but the idea to move had been his. If only he hadn’t been laid off from Intel, they’d be somewhere else now. Safe.

  Usually, in the mirror, she saw a woman in her thirties, strong, fit, capable. Today, only gaunt weariness appeared in the glass. Her neck too thin, skin greenish. Her sinewy arms drooped as she brushed her teeth. She wanted a shower. To let a spray of warm water soothe her. No. Nothing would help, not today. Her racquetball partner had once said she too would someday have the jiggly middle-aged upper arms he called myrtles. Myrtles wouldn’t matter if she were dead.

  Dead, a voice said in the back of her mind. Or in the water pipes beneath the sink, or behind the mirror’s glass. Her face prickled. The trouble with old houses was they creaked and growled. Odd noises assumed the shapes of words if the mind were troubled.

  Mist clouded the mirror’s surface. She wiped it with a washcloth and turned an ear toward it, hoping for only silence, as if wiping the glass would also clear her head. But from behind the mist, or, perhaps the pipes, came a new sound—persistent and low, almost a comfortable hum, but terrifying—the moan of a dying animal.

  “Nijinsky,” she gasped, but the cat was gone. He must’ve followed Dave down the hall. Rachel felt an icy patch on the back of her neck and refused to turn around. If she did, her tired brain would again sculpt the image of the impaled Mr. Ewell strung up in his living room.

  She closed her eyes, slipped out of her pajamas, took a deep breath, and turned the shower on. The strange noises faded, replaced by the cascading splash of water. She stepped in and let hot water spray her face and massage her knotted shoulders.