Under the Overtree

by James A. Moore

  Rick thought about that for a few moments, yes, he could see her point. “You thinking maybe he’s an impostor?”

  Jackie frowned in thought and shook her head. “No. Or if he is, he’s a very knowledgeable one. He works with the same techniques that Will, he’s my old professor, said Crowley used. Lots of questions and research before he even considered looking into a case. God, the man was accused more than once of trying to spend university funds to research a new book or something instead of actually investigating the ‘scene of the crime,’ as it were.”

  “This Will, would he recognize Crowley if he saw him?”

  “Sure, Crowley was his teacher.” She looked ready to ask why and then the comment sank in. “Oh. You want me to call Will?”

  “Would you?” Rick put on his best puppy dog face and after a second’s hesitation, Jackie gave in and nodded.

  “Okay, but only under one condition.”

  “Name it. Anything I can do.”

  “Get that stupid look off of your face.”

  Yep, he thought as he made a dead pan face, nodded solemnly. Get’s ’em every time.

  8

  P.J. and Tyler got together a little after one in the afternoon. Neither of them really knew what to do about what was happening, now that Crowley was in town. Tyler told P.J. everything that Crowley had asked and most of the answers he had given leaving out the answers to his queries on how Crowley had met the author. P.J. nodded several times and sipped at his coffee. The author looked drained by his meeting of the night before, Tyler sympathized.

  P.J. started the conversation rolling again after pouring them both another cup of the powerful black coffee. Both of them needed any stimulation they could get. “He took the book with him. That son of a bitch took the shitting book with him. And I let him. Christ, I’m a coward at heart I suppose.”

  Tyler shook his head and grinned weakly. “No, just smarter than you give yourself credit for. Man scared the pee outta me without even trying. There’s something unnatural about him.”

  P.J. nodded absently, eyes focused on the cup of steaming coffee in his hands. “You may be right about that. I met him twenty-two years ago and he doesn’t look a day older now than he did then. Our Mister Crowley is a very strange man and I wish to hell that he would just leave. I don’t think he plans to work this out in a way that you or I would approve of.”

  Tyler had to know. He could not take Crowley’s word for it. “How did you meet him?”

  P.J. Sanderson closed his eyes for just a moment then, sagging down in his chair before he straightened himself up and looked at Tyler again. “I played with things best left alone. I didn’t believe that magic was a real thing and I really don’t know if I believe it now, not even after all that has happened.

  “When I finally decided that I wanted to write in the horror field, I decided that I would gather a few old books on the subject, just so I could have reference materials at my disposal. It took a fair amount of looking and some of the books cost me a small fortune, but I felt it was best to have the sources and they fascinated me. One of the books I ran across was written entirely in Latin and seemed to be a thesis on Demonology, complete with recipes for summoning some of the lesser demons. Well, never one to pass by a quick chill, I found one that sounded fairly uncomplicated. Nothing happened after the summoning. At least not at first.

  “About a week after the summoning attempt, I noticed a few odd things going on in the dormitory where I lived. Odd areas where the heating seemed to fail, the occasional item missing, nothing serious.

  “Then one day, about a month later, when I had all but forgotten about the book, Jonathan Crowley showed up at the door. Seemed a nice enough man, asked if he could speak to our dorm mother, Mrs. Arbinger. Well, not knowing any better, I got her.

  “She seemed very happy to see him and I was asked to leave them to talk in peace. I had midterms coming up soon and I needed the time to study. I never thought a thing about it. Not until I woke up at three in the morning with Crowley standing over my bed, pointing a finger in my face. The man was furious. He called me a dozen names the likes of which should not be repeated to young man of your age, or to a man of any age and demanded to know why I had summoned a demon.

  “I laughed at him, I thought he was joking or drunk. He was very serious and very sober. He hit me several times, just to make sure he had my attention and then he pointed to a corner of the room. Crowley said a few words that sounded similar to the ones I had spoken a month earlier and before my eyes a hazy glow started in the corner where he had been pointing. ‘There! That is what you summoned!’ he screamed in my face. The shape was entirely wrong for a human being, entirely wrong for any living thing I’ve run across. It looked like a lump of feces with mouths and eyes spread over its surface. I couldn’t breathe. With another few words in what I like to call Pigeon Latin he made the thing just sort of blink out of existence, rather like turning off a television.

  “After he was finished, he told me I had Mrs. Arbinger to thank for my life. He said if she hadn’t called him the creature would have destroyed me by the end of one year. I hadn’t bound it properly into servitude. Just to ensure that I was listening he slapped me again.

  “He ranted about killing me himself, saying that I would come to no good. He said he’d seen my type before that my type never listened. I bawled my eyes out, the man was scary even then. Finally he dusted me off, even gave me a tissue to blow my nose and said that he would let me live. I would have cried from relief then, but I was still afraid he’d hit me some more.

  “The last thing he did was tell me a phone number to call if I ever got into any trouble again, or if I thought that there was someone in trouble.” P.J. shook his head in wonder, eyes widening with a realization. “Do you know, I never even considered calling him until you told me about Mark. I’d actually forgotten all about the incident until then. I never wrote the number he gave me down, I just remembered it when I thought I might need to call him. Lord, I wish I had never remembered the number at all.”

  The silence between hem grew again, Tyler leaning back to digest what he’d heard and P.J. Sanderson remembering more than he wanted to about his college years. They sat in the still bookstore for a long while, lost in their own thoughts.

  9

  It was well after dinnertime and the two nurses on duty were off taking a coffee break in the small lounge the clinic provided. There wasn’t much to do, they only had two patients and both were sleeping soundly. Old Mister Kelley was only in for observation to make sure his concussion didn’t lead to serious complications. Alice and Terry were certain that he’d be fine, it wasn’t the first time he’d dropped the hood of that old truck on his head and it wouldn’t be the last.

  The only good news in Mr. Kelley’s case was the that his head was harder than one of his wife’s pound cakes and both of the nurses were convinced that Emma Kelley’s pound cakes could dent cement from a height of three feet.

  The other case was that poor Scarrabelli girl and the good news there was that she was starting to show signs of recovering. Now and then they’d find she had moved in her sleep or that she had even managed to turn on her side. They both kept their fingers crossed for her. She was such a pretty little girl and wasn’t it just horrible to think someone in Summitville could do such a thing?

  Alice and Terry were far too busy chatting about a hundred patients they had seen in the past to notice the visitor going into Lisa Scarrabelli’s room. That was just fine with Jonathan Crowley. What he wanted to do here was none of their business anyway. Something’s require privacy.

  10

  Tony Scarrabelli didn’t believe in telepathy. In Tony’s world if you could not touch it taste it or feel it, it simply did not exist. Tony had a lot to learn about life at the age of sixteen.

  Tony was doing what he always did when he was stressed out, he was pumping iron. At the time of his precognitive flash, he was bench pressing his free weights with a full two hun
dred and twenty-five pounds. Anyone watching would have thought he’d had a sudden cramp, the way he threw his weights backwards and screamed, looked as if he might even have torn a muscle.

  The weights hit the ground and shook the floor as Tony rolled off of the bench with his hands covering his head. The workout room was gone, all he could see was Jonathan Crowley reaching out with his hands and the acoustic tiles above his body. He’d seen tiles like those just yesterday: they covered the ceiling in his sister’s room at the clinic. The images left as unexpectedly as they had arrived leaving only a blue afterimage when he closed his eyes, as if he had been looking at the sun.

  Tony didn’t take the time to tell anyone anything. He just stormed up the stairs, knocking his sister Amelia to the ground and grabbed the keys to his Camaro. He ignored Amy’s protests and stepped over her prone body, taking the stairs two and three at a time.

  Outside, he ignored the chill air’s response to his overheated body and pulled the car door open with enough force to rock the vehicle. By the time he had pulled the car out of the driveway, his father was screaming for him to get the hell back over to the house and apologize to his sister. If Tony noticed he gave no sign to his father. Gravel flipped through the air behind him as he forced the gas pedal as far down as he could. He fervently hoped the stones took a shining to his father’s face. The clinic was only a mile and a half away and Tony made the distance in record time.

  Alice, the larger of the two nurses tried to stop him as he entered the clinic, tried to explain that visiting hours were over and he would have to come back tomorrow. Tony Scarrabelli shoved her hard enough to knock her on her overripe ass, her squeal of indignation fell on deaf ears.

  Room number three. The door was closed. They never closed the doors to the occupied rooms, instead they dimmed the lights in the hallways at Ten O’clock.

  On more occasions than most of his close friends could count, those that were still alive anyway, Tony had lost his temper and gone into a fit of rage that was almost unholy to watch. Tonight was no exception. Tony didn’t bother with trying the knob on room three, he just slammed his full adrenalized body into the plywood as hard as he could. The door hadn’t been locked. Jonathan Crowley saw no need to bother, he could handle the nurses if they interfered.

  Tony’s momentum carried him all the way to where Crowley stood leaning over his sister and he used the force of his entry to his best advantage, whipping his fist into the side of the startled man’s head.

  Crowley’s head and neck twisted around towards his right shoulder and soon his body was obliged to follow. He spun half of a full circle and landed on his left shoulder and arm against the edge of Lisa’s hospital bed. He managed to hold the awkward stance with his left arm supporting his body weight for all of a second before he crashed on the floor, eyes showing only white.

  Tony reached down and grabbed his prone opponent, growling audibly like a rabid dog. Before he could do more than heave the man into a standing position, Crowley was all over him.

  Tony wasn’t used to losing in a fight, especially not one where he got in the first punch. Crowley brought both fists together into Tony’s solar plexus and head-butted him in the face at the same time; Tony felt his nose mash in as if it were made of cardboard. That took all the fight out of Tony, he wasn’t prepared for much of anything with tears flooding his eyes and the taste of blood and snot filling his mouth. Crowley didn’t let up, he threw somewhere between twelve and three thousand more punches into Tony. It was probably only twelve, but it felt closer to the three thousand mark.

  Tony cut his chin on impact with the floor and lost part of his right incisor as a bonus. He wanted to get up and take the fucker DOWN. It wasn’t meant to be. His best efforts looked like a turtle trying to right itself after some sadistic five-year-old set it on its back. Crowley kicked him in the face for good measure.

  In the distance, padded by the ringing in his ears, he could have sworn he heard Lisa’s voice. It sounded like she was begging Crowley to stop. The world grew fuzzy and gray. Then it disappeared all together.

  11

  When Tony was next aware of anything, it was the sound of Dr. Lewis’s voice coming from over on his left. When he could finally focus his eyes, he saw Dr. Lewis looking down at him. The good doctor was an okay guy, but seeing him that close up was more than Tony could stomach. He closed his eyes, turned his head and puked on the side of the bed. Soon he felt the strong hands of Doctor Lewis holding him in place as he started to fall from the bed. He wondered just when Lewis had grown two extra hands. At least he didn’t have to hit the floor. From Tony’s perspective it looked like one hell of a long fall.

  He closed his eyes again and fell asleep.

  12

  Tony finally reached full consciousness the next morning. Much as he desired a few more hours of sleep, the sound of his parents’ happy tears tore his rest away from him. Why were they crying?

  Tony opened his eyes and sat up on his bed at the clinic; he was feeling better this time around, the room only turned a little instead of spinning. Nausea forced him to close his eyes again, but only briefly.

  Tyler’s voice right next to him brought about a smile. “Hey, it’s alive. Tony, jeez you look awful guy. How’re you feeling?”

  Tony opened his eyes to Tyler looking at him from a few feet away. Behind him were Mark and Cassie. Near the door was Rick Lewis with a woman he’d never seen before.

  Across the room, both of his parents were smiling uncertainly. So was Lisa from her hospital bed.

  Getting out of bed was a task that was almost too much for Tony. He had aches all over his body and his head throbbed with every pulse that ran through him. Twice, he had to grab hold of Mark in order to avoid falling over, Mark was always right there to help.

  Eventually he made it to where his sister lay on the bed. She had never looked more beautiful; pale and thin, face covered with the gray glue residue of her bandages and peppered with a few ugly brown scabs. The sight was enough to make him cry.

  Lisa cried with him, holding her paternal twin in her wasted arms. Everyone had the decency to leave the room for a short while. Neither of them talked, they just held each other as a thousand thoughts ran through their minds.

  In the clinic’s waiting room, Dave Palance was doing his best to interrogate Jonathan Crowley. Crowley seemed perfectly willing to answer any and all of Dave’s questions, it was just that Dave was having a horrible time coming up with any while the man smiled at him.

  Crowley broke the smile just long enough to ask a question of his own, before bringing the grin back to his face. “Deputy Palance, are you going to press charges against me? Or am I free to go?” Dave couldn’t think of an answer to that one; he was just trying to hold the guy until Stacy could get hold of Chuck Hanson. So far, Hanson wasn’t answering on his radio or answering his phone. Crowley turned up the juice on that smirk running across his face and called the deputy’s mind back to the subject at hand. “Deputy? I really do have things to take care of. Am I free to go?”

  Dave ruminated on the question for about half a second before turning his eyes away from the man in front of him. “Sure thing, Mister Crowley. Just do us both a favor and don’t leave town. Okay?”

  Crowley patted the deputy’s hand like a man consoling his son. “Nothing to worry about there, Deputy Palance.” He winked slowly at the astonished man. Dave started as if a bee had stung him. “I wouldn’t dream of going anywhere. This town seems to be where everything is happening. And I like to be where the action is as they say.”

  Dave was glad to see him gone. There was something decidedly unfriendly about the man and Dave had seen what he did to people when he was feeling unfriendly. The Scarrabelli kid looked worse than anyone who was up at Dino’s that first night of Crowley’s stay in town.

  Dave was at a loss when it came to what to do next; he’d already talked to Lisa Scarrabelli and to Crowley. Maybe he should get Tony Scarrabelli’s story, while it was still
fresh in his mind. He headed towards the room where both of the siblings and a great deal of other people were crowded together. Where the hell was Hanson when you needed him? He always took care of this kind of crap himself.

  13

  Crowley left the Summitville Clinic with his trademark smile plastered to his face. The smile slipped when he heard the voice of Tyler Wilson behind him. “Thanks, Mister Crowley.”

  Crowley turned to face the boy, the smile slowly returning, but a little weaker. “What for Tyler? I was just asking the girl a few questions.”

  Tyler flashed a quick grin of his own at that. “Yeah. Probably. But thanks anyway.”

  Crowley shook his head, a frown forming on his face. “I don’t get you, Tyler. You’re thanking me for something that just happened. Why?”

  Tyler looked at the ground, his face unreadable. “Ah,” Crowley started. “Now I begin to see the picture. She’s someone special, isn’t she?” Tyler nodded quickly, almost guiltily. “Well then, you are welcome.”

  As Crowley made to turn away, Tyler grabbed the man by his arm. It could be opened for debate as to whether or not that was a foolish move; Crowley turned back to face him with a curious look. “What did she tell you?” Tyler asked. “Did she tell you who did it?” Crowley looked at Tyler without speaking for a very long time. Finally he nodded. “Tell me who it was.” It was not a request.

  Crowley looked at Tyler, looked at the rage and frustration welling behind the boy’s eyes. “No. You really don’t want to know that, Tyler.” To Tyler, he sounded almost sad. “Sometimes, it’s best not to know. Let’s just say it was a stranger and leave it at that.”