Mister White: The Novel

by John C. Foster

  “He’ll kill you,” Lewis said.

  And this was the kicker because the town fool, the court jester with a badge, had said, “They’re my boys.”

  Lewis had spun the Glock around with some trick move and held it out to him butt first. Nothing to say, Wannamaker took the gun and tossed his car keys at him. Two kids trading baseball cards.

  “Even Steven,” he said and went after the boys.

  He remembered slipping in so much blood it was as if the staircase had been doused with a fire hose. Then he saw that thing…

  Static.

  Wannamaker pushed himself up, trailing an anguished cry.

  “Vixen and Nixon and Blixen and that other one…” Determined to speak, to stay conscious, all he could think to say were the absurd lyrics to that idiot song that played over and over on the radio.

  And now he was freezing and walking towards those spinning Christmas lights, all red and blue.

  Hands were on him and he heard words he knew he should understand, but it was just too much effort. Someone threw a jacket around his shoulders and led him to sit in the backseat of a squad car.

  “Rick, Rick, are you hurt? What’s all this blood, man? Tell me about this blood.”

  Wannamaker tried to focus, but the frozen liquid on his eyes made it hard. “I told…” he said, making a futile effort to clutch the lapels of the man in front of him. “I told…”

  “Told what?” the voice asked. “Talk to me man.”

  “Told…” Wannamaker mumbled.

  “Get him to the hospital,” another voice ordered, and someone carefully tucked his legs into the car. In the moment before the door closed, Wannamaker heard someone say, “Did you see his hair? It was totally white.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  - 1 -

  Gerard stomped on the accelerator and the police 4x4 skidded from the lot, slamming on an angle over the hard snow packed beside the driveway and blowing through in an explosion of white shards. The vehicle slid sideways into Main Street going too fast, but Gerard wrestled it under control and hit the gas again.

  “What the hell was that thing?” Gerard asked, voice tight with fear. He had seen it in the doorway and every hair had stood on end. Lewis had fired the police twelve-gauge up at it from a range of no more than twenty feet from the bottom of the back staircase. Gerard heard the spackle of pellets against the hallway inside, but Lewis hit nothing.

  “Just go!” Lewis barked.

  “Tell me what it was!”

  “It knows about Hedde,” Lewis shot back. “Somehow, the damned thing knows about her!” He pulled the crumpled statement from his pocket and smoothed it out on the dash.

  “I can’t read it,” Gerard said, flicking buttons until the flashers overhead began to strobe and the few cars on the street pulled aside as they roared past.

  “‘Herr Weiss,’” Lewis said. “She wrote ‘Herr Weiss.’”

  “So what?”

  “It’s German,” Lewis whispered. “She wrote Mister—”

  It happened quickly. Two glowing lumps of coal rose up from the road ahead and Gerard had just enough time to think eyes! before the snowy body of a goat struck the windshield with a horrific crash, driving the safety glass into driver and passenger as the big vehicle slid broadside and flipped, flinging metal and glass through three revolutions before it planed across the snow on its roof.

  Stunned and bleeding, Lewis struggled to orient himself, reaching through the empty passenger side window to dig his fingers into the snow as he struggled to drag himself from the vehicle.

  Gerard hurried around to the passenger side and gripped him by the wrists to pull him free, tearing a shriek of pain from Lewis.

  “Ribs,” Lewis gasped as the big man knelt down, the right side of his face gleaming black with blood.

  “What was that?” Gerard asked.

  “It’s him,” Lewis said. He reached out and grabbed Gerard with desperate strength. “Get to Hedde. Please, get to Hedde.”

  Gerard made his decision with the speed of a wild animal. No sooner had Lewis released his grip than Gerard was up and bulling across the open field of snow until he pushed his way through snowy branches and into the trees.

  Lewis rested in the snow for a moment before he lifted his head and dragged himself from the wreckage.

  - 2 -

  Alone in the deadroom, Hedde sat in a tiny dome of light thrown by a single candle set beside the board. Despite her sophistication, she was a little girl to the world of spirit, her fourteen years the blink of an eye to a ghost.

  The dust she disturbed swirled to form shapes and patterns that she dared not look at. Despite her courage, she was afraid. She whimpered as she rested the fingertips of both hands atop the plastic planchette with the gentleness of sparrows alighting on a branch.

  Around her the building groaned in the secret language of houses and tried to make her stop, but the little girl did not listen, could not listen, as the air thickened with mold in this attic where a happy couple once lay together.

  “Hello,” Hedde’s voice punctured the silence. “Is anyone there?” She felt like a rabbit beneath a circling hawk. “I know you’re here.”

  She glanced at the spill of shadows in the corners of the room and shivered as they pooled on the dusty floor. Had they come closer?

  “I know you’re here,” she said, and inside her mind she screamed no even as she said aloud, “Herr Weiss.”

  The curtains over the bed undulated in an imaginary breeze, and she groaned at the creaking movement of the red door below.

  “Do you want to talk to me?”

  The planchette slid under her fingers and goosebumps broke out on her skin as the plastic scraped against cardboard. She leaned over the board as it stopped above a letter.

  “J,” she said. The planchette slid left along the arc of letters until it rested on another. “A.”

  “J-A,” she repeated. “Ja?” she asked with passable pronunciation. “Are you German?”

  This time the planchette slid up and to the left, past the ornate image of the sun to rest on the word YES.

  There was a slithering sound from the hallway below and her head whipped around, hair flinging wildly. She almost blurted out, “Are you here?” but caught herself just in time and went still. Her eyes darted to the grate on the floor and she carefully dropped to her belly.

  She inched carefully across the floor, leaving behind the tiny dome of light until she was in shadow. Placing her head on the floor, Hedde listened for several long seconds but heard no further sounds of movement. Realizing she could delay no longer, she held her breath and lifted her head until she could see down through the grate into the room below.

  The white blur of a face stared up at her.

  Hedde screamed.

  She scuttled away from the grate in a crablike movement, whirling clumsily as a sudden gust shook the room. The candle blew out and she was left with the terrifying image of the blankets on the bed swelling and rising. A child’s image of ghosts, of a father playing tricks on Halloween. But Hedde knew this was no illusion, and she sprang to her feet, body suffused with panic.

  It was in the room.

  Getoutgetoutgetout.

  She darted around the thing beneath the blankets as white hands stretched from the half open closet to clutch her in an impossible grip.

  Hedde fell headlong on the floor. The Ouija board went flying as she fought and twisted, shrieks tearing at her lungs even as she clawed at the rug which bunched and came with her, the nightmare of every child come true as it dragged her into the closet.

  An answering howl rent the air, and she felt the thunder of his charge even during her struggle, her head and shoulders all that remained free, the rest of her body screaming against the impossible cold and she flung out her arms.

  “Etienne!”

  And he was there, her savior, his mighty jaws gripping her wrist hard enough to send blood spattering as he dug in his hind legs, his growl
vibrating the floorboards. Hedde felt a moment of clarity and bright, shining hope.

  A moment later she was sucked into darkness, and Etienne was dragged after.

  - 3 -

  Breath was whistling in and out of tortured lungs and his thighs burned from effort as Gerard broke from the tree line and staggered up the hill.

  The house was a great blot against the starry sky. Once the sight of love, more recently the sight of loneliness, never before had the sight of the big house struck him numb with fear.

  He made out an orange glow wavering in the attic window and paused to wipe at the tears streaking from his half-frozen eyes.

  “Hedde,” he croaked, hands on his knees, wanting nothing more than to collapse into the snow.

  His right boot broke through the icy crust, followed by his left. In a moment he was moving at a dogged trot, blowing like a bellows as he passed the hanging tree and he slowed, breaking stride to wrench the axe from the broad stump.

  The kitchen door was open in unwholesome welcome and he paused, skin crawling as his eyes sought to pull detail from the dark interior. His upper lip curled at a rank smell that brought to mind dead things rotting in a crawlspace.

  A scream careened like an object thrown wildly down the stairs, and Etienne’s answering howl galvanized Gerard into action as he charged into the kitchen and broke for the stairs, taking them two at a time.

  - 4 -

  Lewis ran awkwardly with one arm clutching his ribs, stumbling into branches and pressing through cascades of tumbling snow as he tracked Gerard’s passage with a powerful police flashlight.

  Exhaustion was a physical weight pressing down on his shoulders and his head hung low, blowing like a horse pushed to breaking. Blind in the woods. Blindly trusting the trail.

  Anything. Anything. Anything.

  His mantra offered to whomever might listen. To the nonnen for strength. To God for salvation. To Mister White for mercy where he knew none would be found.

  He was a lurching thing beyond fear, though he suspected not beyond one, final horror. Failure as a father. As husband.

  Anything.

  He was an undeserving fool.

  Pain had replaced time in his universe when Lewis pushed past a pine bough and staggered up the hillside. The moonlight rendered the landscape as a boldly drawn work of pen and ink as he marched past the silent rows of Christmas trees, an incongruous sight in his personal hell.

  There were no lights on in the house.

  He labored up the wooden steps and leaned against the doorway, aiming the flashlight into the interior and halting at the black mess of ash scribbled in great sweeps across the linoleum. The words HERR WEISS marked in slashing strokes.

  Footsteps blazed a path through the ashen writing.

  Lewis caught his breath in the doorway until he could find his voice and called out, “Gerard!” He paused as a numbing blackness pressed in at the edges of his vision. “Hedde!”

  He stepped inside, groaning at the sharp pain in his ribs as he braced his hands on the kitchen table. They peeled free with a sticking sound when he was able to move deeper into the house towards the base of the staircase.

  He had the sense of movement from above even as he heard the thud of boots against hardwood. He aimed the light upward to see Gerard wavering at the top of the stairs, eyes wide with horror until he fell forward with no effort to catch himself, the impact that of a hammer against meat. Gerard slid face first down the stairs as Lewis hobbled backwards. The big man came to rest at the bottom, an axe buried between his shoulder blades.

  Lewis knelt and pressed two fingers to Gerard’s neck, knowing the futility. A groan of pain escaped him as he rose, hand on the round finial at the base of the banister to step over the body before making his way upstairs, following the wobbling circle of light.

  Anything. Anything. The word echoed in his mind as he pulled himself up the cliff face of each single step. Eighteen times anything.

  He had some dim idea of offering Mister White a trade, himself for his daughter. Take me to the glass room and reap pain and fear until you’re full to bursting.

  Lewis made out the trail of reddish footprints along the hall and followed them, dragging a hand along the wall for balance, dislodging several framed pictures that fell with a crash.

  The red door was half open and he nudged it further with the flashlight before aiming the beam upstairs where it caught dust motes floating like the flakes of a gentle snowfall.

  “Hedde,” he croaked, aware of a rhythmic noise from above. He felt something in his middle give and used his free arm on the railing to pull himself up, his light panning across the tacky spill covering the floorboards until he saw the furred carnage twisted into a bunched rug in front of an open closet. He covered his nose against the sewer stink of disembowelment.

  “Oh…” The sound might have grown into a wail if not for the gentle creak of wood and he turned, sweeping the flashlight around until he saw her in the rocking chair.

  “Hedde?”

  Her eyes were overly wide and white in the red smear of her face, as if registering surprise. She neither flinched nor turned as his light struck her, and though he saw the pupils react, the eyes didn’t track when he passed a hand in front of them.

  “Hedde?” he said gently, stretching the fingers of his right hand to touch her chest, assuring himself of the rise and fall. “It’s dad, hon, I’m here.”

  She continued to rock back and forth as he slid to his knees and felt the bump of the metal flask in his pocket. He pulled the flask free and unscrewed the lid, splashing water into his cupped hand before gently wiping her face.

  She twitched and he nearly dropped the flask.

  “Hedde?” he said, wiping more water on her face until she turned her head like an infant avoiding a wash cloth. She whispered something.

  “What?” Lewis leaned closer. “Oh, Hedde.”

  “He’s inside me…” So low he almost imagined the whisper.

  Lewis recoiled back onto his haunches, but his daughter made no move except to turn her blank eyes towards him again, rocking back and forth. He glanced at the flask in his hand as an idea floated across his desperate thoughts.

  “Drink this, honey, just a sip.”

  He gently pushed her bottom lip down with his fingers and held the flask to her mouth, wincing as it clacked against her teeth.

  Lewis filled his daughter’s mouth with holy water.

  The reaction was immediate. Hedde arched her back, sliding from the chair into the mess on the floor while her eyes rolled wildly in their sockets. He straddled her writhing form and she fought him, scoring his cheek with her nails as he forced the flask into her mouth, splitting her lip. “Drink! Drink!”

  She went limp beneath him and her eyes blinked in confusion. “Daddy?”

  He was leaning down when she began to buck and she screamed, “He’s inside me, Daddy! Oh God, he’s inside me!”

  “How do I help you? Tell me how!” Lewis said, pinning her wrists. “How do I get him out?”

  “You don’t,” she said.

  Lewis pulled back to look at the thing staring up from his daughter’s eyes.

  “Drink,” he said, jamming the flask into her mouth again as she fought until the water was bubbling out between her teeth and she went limp in his arms.

  Fighting his own pain, Lewis lifted Hedde into his arms and carried her downstairs into the bathroom off the hall. He washed her face and hands as best he could in the sink while her head rolled loosely, and she blinked up at him with the gaze of an aging barfly wheedling free beer.

  “Gonna need more of that stuff,” Hedde slurred.

  “Is it making him go away?” Lewis asked.

  She shook her head.

  “Marrow in my bones. Nightmare in my mind. My nightmare now.” A limp hand pawed at his lapel. “But…it quiets him. Can hear myself.”

  How long Lewis wept on the bathroom floor, holding his daughter to him, he did not know. But wh
en she touched the scratches on his cheek and said, “He’s coming,” Lewis roused himself and carried her downstairs, setting her down before the fireplace. “I’ll be right back,” he whispered and returned to the base of the stairs.

  He moved woodenly, as if he had no joints. Kneeling beside Gerard took an effort of will. Touching the cooling body took even more. He had so many things to say to this man. Too many things. In the end, he said nothing.

  Lewis saw the kitchen door open and shuffled outside, fear mounting until he found Hedde wandering in a fugue, unsuccessfully trying to slide the ice-crusted cover from the Camaro. He hoisted her into the passenger seat and would not remember until much later that her hands were newly wetted with blood.

  Before they left he broke the lock off the barn door and took the time to dump a bag of dry food on the dirt floor at Hedde’s insistence. Sophie’s mournful eyes followed his every move, but she made no sound.

  Lewis settled into the driver’s seat and guided the old hunk of Detroit rolling iron carefully down the driveway, heading for Father Messina’s church.

  - 5 -

  Lewis found Messina arranged about the interior of the church in red dismemberment, lit by the headlights of the still running car just outside the open doors.

  He struggled to find some word or gesture of atonement, but in the end simply refilled the flask with holy water, the bubbling of liquid the only sound.

  - 6 -

  Too tired for clever routes, Lewis picked up Interstate 95 in Massachusetts and drove south, watching the broken white lines disappear beneath the car. Hedde lolled in the passenger seat nuzzling the flask, equal parts degenerate drunk and overgrown infant.

  She was nestled in an aura of that horrid butcher-shop stink, and his stomach churned at her proximity.

  “I’ve come so far,” Lewis pleaded with childish desperation.

  “You never should have gone,” she said without great concern.