“Of course.”
“She’s the one that told me about the slow train,” Skid said, “good while back. I just filed it away in my head, another one of her strange observations, but when Melissa brought all this up about her cousin Nickel, I remembered it.”
“You said you were distracted by the people at the trestle?” I said impatiently.
“Yes. There was some kind of disturbance, and we went to break it up. We had a while before the train was supposed to be by, and Orvid hadn’t showed up yet.”
“Think again,” I said softly. “Orvid saw all this. He was already in the abandoned station.”
Skid leaned forward quickly.
“Are you serious?” he growled.
“He told me about your going to the trestle.”
“Okay.” Skid sat back. “Damn.”
“So what happened? With the disturbance?”
“Oh, it was just a little fight. Happens a lot. They’re all zombie drunk and most of them have some kind of mental situation.”
“You went to break up the fight.”
“We did.” He grinned. “You should have seen this one old guy, a real character. Said he was a preacher and was trying to save the rest of them. Genuine hellfire-and-brimstone type.”
“He was the cause of the fight,” I whispered, my pulse quickening.
Skid stared at me.
“Fever?” he asked. “Your face is all drained. You’re white as a sheet. What the hell?”
“That man, the preacher, is named Hiram Frazier.” I swallowed. “He’s the one who broke into my house. He’s insane.”
Twelve
It took some doing, but I managed to tell Skidmore all I knew about Hiram Frazier. I hadn’t realized until I had to talk about him how inexplicably frightened he made me feel. I was having a little difficulty breathing. I had no idea why talking about the man gave me such discomfort, but I was nearly shaking by the time I finished talking about him.
“And after you were gone from my house,” I concluded my brief tale, “I found a Bible open to a certain passage in Revelation right by the phone.”
“Your Bible?”
“Never saw it before.”
“What was the passage?”
“‘Behold I am coming soon, bringing my recompense, to repay every one for what he has done.’” My voice sounded as if it were coming from inside a cave.
“Jesus,” Skid breathed. “Why didn’t you tell me about this before?”
“I thought it was just a weird encounter. Nothing to tell, really. But now I think there’s something much more to him than meets the eye.”
I didn’t want to confess to Skidmore or to anyone that I had considered it a real possibility that the man was a ghost.
“Name’s Hiram Frazier?” Skid typed something into his desktop computer. “I’ll check, see what we got.”
“You ran him off from the rest of the people at the trestle that night,” I suggested, my words slurring slightly.
“Yes. He was clearly the instigator. We moved him along.”
“I saw him that night, out on the highway closer to home.”
“What time?”
“No idea.” I rubbed my forehead. “Look, I know this sounds strange, but I did a research article about a year ago concerning train hopping that included a statistical report of accidents that happen, like at the crossing the other night. I was just telling Lucinda about it. I got most of the information from the Federal Railroad Administration, but of course I interviewed a number of men. When Frazier was in my car, he told me a story that I thought maybe I’d heard before. Now there’s something buzzing in the back of my head. I have to have a look at those interviews. I think they may have mentioned this Hiram Frazier character.”
The lamp on Skid’s desk was surrounded by a vague halo, and the rest of the room was dimming.
“You seem kind of shook up,” Skidmore said skeptically. “Are you positive they talked about this man?”
“No.” I closed my eyes, trying to hear the interviews in my mind. “But there’s something I can’t quite remember that’s ringing a lot of subconscious bells.”
“Okay.” Skidmore’s voice was completely in earnest. “Find the interviews.”
He had had a sufficient number of experiences with me during our lifelong friendship to know when to ignore me, and when to take me seriously.
“They’re on tape, you know,” I said.
“I figured. I’ll do a little follow-up on this computer search for Frazier, and you call me or come back here if you’ve got something you want me to know.”
“Yes.” I stood absently.
“You okay to drive?” he asked sternly, seeing my unsteadiness. “You look funny.”
“I feel strange,” I mumbled.
“You having a spell?” He stood too. “You haven’t had one of those in a good while.”
“I feel strange,” I repeated. “Light-headed. And my heart’s trying to crack a rib.”
“You’re breathing funny too,” he said suddenly, moving around his desk. “Melissa!”
She appeared in the doorway instantly.
“Call J.J. and get an ambulance here now!” Skid barked.
“Wait,” I protested. “I’m okay.”
“Call!” Skid insisted.
“I’m having an anxiety attack,” I managed, barely able to breathe.
Melissa paused.
“You sure?” Skid demanded to know.
“I’ve had enough of them,” I assured him. “Something’s wrong, but it’s mostly in my head, not my body.”
“Should I call?” Melissa asked weakly.
“I just need some water,” I told her, “and to catch my breath.”
Every time I closed my eyes, images of snarling dogs and the dead-man stare of Hiram Frazier’s eyes swam in my mind.
“What the hell is it, Fever?” Skid said, searching my eyes.
“I’m having a minor episode because something I know subconsciously is trying to swim up to my consciousness. And whatever it is that’s buried is bothering me enough to engender this little attack. It’s probably causing some sort of ambivalent state of which I’m unaware. That ambivalence is the root of my distress.”
“I barely know what you’re talking about,” Skid said wearily, “but I know it means something to you.”
“I know something important,” I said, trying to clarify, “that I don’t know I know.”
“Yeah.” Skid nodded curtly. “Stop trying to explain it. You just sound crazier.”
“Right.” I got my bearings. “I think the best thing I can do is go home and dig up those notes and tapes. I’ll call you when I do.”
“If that homeless man is wandering around up there,” Melissa interrupted, her brow furrowed, “and he’s already broke into Dr. Devilin’s house once, should he go up there by himself? I’m sorry, but I overheard what you said about the Bible quote and all.”
“Good point,” Skid allowed.
“I don’t need someone to walk me to my door,” I answered, irritated. “The state I’m in, I’m a serious threat to anyone who comes close to me.”
Melissa looked up into my eyes. I stood nearly a foot taller. She let out a little laugh.
“Well, I wouldn’t want to mess with you right now,” she said lightly.
I looked at Skid.
“There you are,” I told him. “Professional assessment from an officer of the law.”
“Uh-huh,” he said wryly, “but if you get your ass kicked, don’t come running to me.”
“You know,” I said, regaining a little composure, moving out of Skid’s office, “you never used to apply that sort of language to your daily affairs. I’ve noticed a decline in your vocabulary since you became sheriff.”
“I’m sorry,” he said contritely.
“Good.”
“All kinds of damn sorry,” he went on. “Sorry as hell.”
“God.” I looked at Melissa imploringly.
I headed for the exit, hand in the air waving to them, not looking back.
“I’ll call.”
I drove back home with the windows down, the fresh air reviving me. Night drew a quick shade over the sky, it always does in autumn in the mountains. Sunset never happens slowly. My headlights were on before I was up the mountain.
I sat in the truck a moment, headlights shining directly onto the porch. My front door was solidly closed. No shadows moved. Still, I revved the engine to let lurking strangers know I was there. For some reason I even blinked the lights on and off several times, a bizarre attempt at aggressive behavior.
Partially satisfied, after a time, that no one was around the house, I turned off the truck and headed in.
The wind brushed a scattering of silver rain that brushed my face, the ground, the roof of the house. The moon was invisible behind dull nimbostratus. Thunder in the distance presaged an oncoming downpour. Jagged flickers of lightning shocked the clouds.
I stomped loudly up the steps of the porch, continuing my efforts to frighten, and found that my front door was still locked. Good.
Key in, the lock clicked, and I instantly turned on the living room lights. I went right to the kitchen and turned on those lights too, then locked the front door behind me.
The chill in the air did nothing to soothe the tingling hot edge of my hairline. I felt a flu coming on. I pulled off my jacket. Lightning flashed again outside, closely followed by thunder and an infinitesimal brownout. The storm was coming closer.
I checked everywhere a man might hide: closets, dark corners, behind the sofa. Then I grabbed a stout umbrella and charged upstairs, waving the umbrella before me as if it were a saber, making harsh exhalations of breath partly to sound mean, partly out of fear.
Upstairs rooms were as vacant of intruders as those downstairs had been. I relaxed a little.
Back downstairs, umbrella returned to its place, I rummaged in the credenza where I kept my Wollensak tape recorder. Beside the recorder, I found several spiral notebooks in which I had written quick reference keys to the tapes. Arcane as it was, my system was familiar to me, and I could find anything I was looking for instantaneously.
The reference notebook led me to Tape 174, “Rail Hoppers incident 6, at three-quarters of an inch in.” I wanted to try that one first because it was underlined and asterisked in my notes.
I pulled out the tape recorder, the box marked 174, and found a pencil just in case I wanted to jot down something. I plugged in the machine, flipped the notebook to a blank page, sat on the sofa, threaded the tape. I turned on the Wollensak, fast-forwarded it to about the right place, and hit play.
“ … at about suppertime.” A scratchy voice leapt from the machine in the middle of a sentence. “He was crazier than most. Told all manner of holy-holy. I didn’t pay much attention.”
“But you say he was a preacher?” I heard my own voice interrupt.
“That’s what he said,” the voice corrected. “Who knows. Half these boys in the yard, they tell you near about anything if they think it’ll get ’em somewheres. I only started listening to him when he told us about his good trick.”
“Yes.” My voice on tape sounded tinny to me. “Some of the others told me about a man with a trick. He has a certain way of getting money from people.”
“It’s a good one,” the voice cackled, “if you can pull it off.”
“But they say that man isn’t here anymore.”
“Nope,” the man on the tape confirmed, “gone-gone. Ain’t seed him in a month or more. He was crazier than most. Said he was the Lord’s whipping boy.”
“Did he say why?”
“Some crap about his wife dead in the bed,” the voice mumbled. “I didn’t pay much attention.”
“Until he told you about his trick.”
“It was a good one,” the voice said, sprightly again. “If you can pull it off.”
“Can you describe it to me?”
“Let me hear myself on the tape again,” the man asked.
“Tell me about the trick, and I will.”
“Okay,” the man said quickly. “Well, he had to be waiting at a stoplight, and he’d have to catch a car with the driver’s window down, or get the driver to roll down the window, which is harder. If the car got caught by the red light, he would step up quick, shove his arm in the car, turn off the engine, and take the key!”
He howled with laughter. Even on the tape it was a haunted, hollow sound.
“What they hell can they do?” the voice went on after a moment. “They can’t drive the car till you give ’em the key. And you don’t do that till they give you the money. It’s perfect. If you can make it work.”
“You keep saying that,” I said on the tape. “Have you tried it?”
“Yes.” His voice was different. “Once. I don’t do it no more. I should have chose an old woman driver, or a kid. Somebody that gets scared. I had a man driver, and as soon as I put my hand in the car, he stepped on the gas and took off. Ran a red light. I almost lost my arm. Nearly got drug through the entire intersection.”
“So it’s dangerous. This man’s trick.”
“I ain’t never heard of nobody that can make it work except him.”
“You don’t know his name.”
“He said he was from Tennessee. My name’s Georgie.”
“Well, thank you, Georgie, for telling me about this.”
“Did the others tell you too?”
“Yes. I have about five versions of this. They’re almost exactly the same.
“So you see I ain’t lying. Let me hear my voice now. You got five dollars?”
“I’ll just rewind the tape.”
The machine went silent. It had been at that moment that I had rewound it so that the informant could hear himself.
I stopped the tape. My hand was shaking. I was certain I heard strange noises outside. When I stood up, my head was light. I may actually have staggered a little trying to get to the phone. All the while the thing that had struggled in the back of my mind was surfacing, a huge flesh-eating monster.
No one had found the keys to the Volkswagen. The engine might have been off when the train hit it. Buried somewhere in my subconscious I had known the answer to those two riddles almost when I had heard about them. But I would not allow myself to remember, I’d kept insisting that the wreck had been an accident.
I made it to the phone, dialed Skid’s number.
“Hello, Melissa,” I said after a moment. “Let me speak to Skid, please.”
“Dr. Devilin? Is that you? You don’t sound like yourself. You still having that spell?”
“Please, Melissa,” I said softly. “Just let me talk to Skid.”
“Okay.” She sounded worried.
The line was silent a moment. Then:
“Fever?” Skid’s voice was rich with concern.
“I found what I was looking for. I know what happened.”
“Sorry?”
“The girls.” I sat on the arm of the sofa. “It didn’t have anything to do with drugs. We were wrong about that.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Hiram Frazier,” I began.
But before I could say anything more, lightning and thunder exploded simultaneously and the house was plunged into darkness.
The phone was dead.
My breathing quickened, and I could feel the pulse at my temples.
I hung up, a little numb.
Brief power outages were so common on the mountain that I kept several oil lamps, matches, and a flashlight in the kitchen pantry.
I stood up just as another bolt of lightning snapped, attendant thunder shaking the windows.
I moved quickly to the kitchen, fetched the lamps, lit them, and pulled out the flash light.
I checked the front door again, even though I
knew it was locked. I went to each window, made certain the locks were tight.
Outside, black as pitch, the rain began to pummel the roof. I pulled all the curtains, went back to the kitchen.
Hot tea seemed the right idea. It was for just such occasions that I had kept my old gas stove.
I struck a match, turned on the gas, and instantly flame leapt into a comfortable circle barely smaller than my silver kettle. I thought peppermint tea would be best, nothing with caffeine. I was jangled enough. The oil lamps made the kitchen butter-bright, and I felt better. I had gotten the tea, pulled a mug out of the cupboard, and found the honey before I realized that I was retreating.
I knew I had to go immediately into town to tell Skidmore my revelation. I couldn’t hang about the darkened house, afraid to go out, seriously attempting to avoid the thoughts in my mind. The impulse to light the lamps and have tea was a boyhood regression, a retreat to all the times I’d been alone in the house when I was seven, and ten, and fourteen, with no idea where my parents were, or when they would return. I was stunned at how instantaneously I had fallen into the pattern, as quickly as the thunder had followed lightning. I was disappointed that the pattern was so ingrained, down to the peppermint tea I’d drunk as a boy.
I turned off the flame under the kettle, blew out both lamps. A thin ghost rose up from each and quickly dissipated, my mother and father, leaving the house once again.
I grabbed the flashlight, scooped up my jacket, and headed for the door, keys in hand. The rain was pounding harder and I thought about the umbrella I’d left by the door, but I didn’t want to be hampered by it. I could just make a dash for the truck, stay dry enough.
Out on the porch, flashlight under my arm, I locked my front door, checked it twice, struggled to get my jacket on.
I ran the flashlight’s beam over my truck and around it. Everything seemed fine. I twirled my keys absently on their ring.
Rain pierced the air with a thousand silver spears. I drew in a breath and stepped off the porch, lurching the ten or twelve steps to where I’d left the truck.
Another lightning bolt momentarily turned the pitch sky to pale day. Before I completely realized that I had seen the man’s shadow move around the side of the porch, he was upon me.
A Minister's Ghost: A Fever Devilin Mystery Page 16
