by Sara Reinke
“No,” Paul whispered again.
“You don’t have any ideas?” Cameron asked. “I mean, I see you on TV all the time. You really know your shit. I thought you would―”
“Cameron,” Paul hissed, drawing abruptly to a halt.
“Oh, Jesus, what?” Cameron gasped in sudden panic, his feet scuttling to a halt. “What is it? What?”
Paul glanced at him off his shoulder, his brows furrowed. “Shut the fuck up.”
“Oh,” Cameron whispered, his eyes wide, and he nodded once. “Okay. Sure.”
They finally reached the broad top of the main basement stairs, crumbling risers of concrete and broken tile leading downward into absolute blackness. Paul panned the beam of his flashlight down and felt the tickling sensation in his nose again. “This is it,” he whispered.
Cameron shied more closely to him. “Are you sure?”
Paul brushed his fingers against his nose and held them over his shoulder so Cameron could see the blood. “Pretty sure, yeah.”
He paused long enough to take the tissue Nikki had given him out of his pocket and press it against his nose. He glanced at Cameron as he pinched the bridge, and nodded once in the direction from which they’d come. “You go back now,” he said. “Go sit in the truck and wait for me. Remember what I told her―thirty minutes, and you call for help. I don’t care what you have to tell them, just get them here.”
Cameron nodded. Ghosthunter or not, in the goddamn apparent Mecca of haunted houses or not, the kid seemed perfectly happy for the escape opportunity. He turned to hightail it, then turned again, looking at Paul. “Lieutenant Frances?”
“Yeah, kid,” Paul replied, drawing the tissue away from his nose and taking an experimental sniff. When Cameron didn’t immediately answer, he glanced at him. “What?”
“Would you…I just…I mean, I know before you said you didn’t believe,” Cameron said, shifting his weight nervously. “And you might still not believe, but I…I still thought that I…it might…”
Paul sighed, frowning, and Cameron finished in a rush of voice and breath. “I hope you might consider joining the Ghosthunting Society. We could really use someone like you. Someone with your powers.”
Terrific. I could sign up with the goddamn Superfriends. “I don’t have any powers,” Paul told him. “I’m a cop. That’s it. And most days anymore, I can hardly claim that, either. Go on.” He nodded again. “Get out of here.”
* * *
Paul started down the stairs. He felt momentarily dizzy, as recollections in his mind from his dreams, and his own personal perceptions overlapped in a bizarre, bewildering landscape. He paused, closing his eyes, drawing in a deep breath. He thought of Nikki and her pink rabbit’s foot. It belongs to my friend, Charlie. It gives me something to focus on―him―so I don’t get overloaded here.
M.K., Paul thought, visualizing his oldest daughter in his mind, lying against the couch, laughing and talking on the phone, her long legs propped against the cushions, her long hair spilled over the arm rest.
Bethany, he thought, and he pictured her in his mind, smiling at him through the bathroom mirror as she brushed her teeth. Lastly, he imagined his brother’s face, his dark eyes, the broad measure of his smile. Jay.
When he opened his mind again, the sense of deja vu, the peculiar notion that his memories and reality were unfolding simultaneously before him was gone. His mind was his own again. He continued down the stairs. At least I know I’m headed in the right direction, he thought. I remember this. I’ve seen it before. I’ve been here before, in my dreams.
He strained his ears, listening for any hint of sound from above, below or around him, but there was nothing. Only the scrape of his shoe soles against the stairs, the dusting of plaster, dirt, broken paint and dead leaves beneath each step. He wanted desperately to call out to M.K. and Bethany, to scream their names into the darkness until he was hoarse from the effort, but he held his tongue, keeping silent. Not until I know for sure who I’m up against.
Do you know who it is? Cameron had asked. The killer, I mean. The guy you said you’ve been dreaming about.
No, he’d replied, but that wasn’t entirely true. He had an idea of who it was; who’d murdered Melanie Geary and Aimee Chesshire. He had an idea of who had taken his daughters and Jay. He just couldn’t believe it. He couldn’t wrap his mind around it. The evidence all led him in one inevitable direction, but he still couldn’t accept it.
There’s a storm, Emma had told him, part of a message from his dead mother.She’s seen it coming. She told me it was right next door. She told me Daddy was going to be hurt.
Why the hell didn’t I listen? he thought. A storm right next door―why didn’t that ring any kind of bell?
Susan Vey―his next-door neighbor―had held a hell of a grudge against Melanie Geary. Susan’s brother David worked for Milton Enterprises, the company that owned Liberty Sanitarium. She’d told him David had hurt his back on an asphalt job, and he remembered seeing the freshly laid asphalt on the new roads and cul-de-sacs at the bottom of the hill. If David had been working the Liberty Heights development, he would have the access codes to the security gates. And if he had the combination codes, Susan could have easily learned them from him.
The time frame was right for Susan, too. Brenda had told him there was no history of the modus operandi they were seeing in their area. Like their killer, Susan was new to the city, too.
I just started last month, she’d told him. I know, fresh-faced girl, big new city…it’s very ‘Mary Tyler Moore.’ Everyone keeps telling me. Whatever the hell that means.
His mind kept turning back to something Jason had told him, something about a Greek myth, and about how Susan had a penchant for falling for older men, like Melanie Geary’s father. Like Paul. An Elektra complex, he’d called it, Paul thought. He told me Elektra killed people for revenge.
And if she wanted revenge against Geary for dumping her, and that’s why she went after Melanie, she could sure as hell want revenge against me, too. Enough to take my kids, to hurt Jay.
Susan was small, but strong. Paul remembered admiring the musculature in her arms and legs when they’s jogged together. She was no shrinking violet, and Brenda had confirmed Paul’s visions and dreams in which he’d subdued his victims using a stun gun. If Susan had caught Jay by surprise, and incapacitated him with the stun gun, Paul believed that she could have easily intimidated and overpowered the girls into submission, too. And because she was stronger than the girls, she would have hurt Jay first―put him well out of commission―to eliminate any further threat potential from him.
But why Aimee Chesshire? It didn’t make sense. Was there something about Aimee Chesshire he didn’t know? A piece of the puzzle missing? Or had Susan simply enjoyed what she’d started with Melanie Geary and wanted to continue?
He heard something from the basement below, and he immediately drew still upon the stairs. He hit the switch on his flashlight, killing the beam, slapping himself into abrupt and absolute darkness. He stood motionless, his breath still, his eyes wide, his ears straining. He heard it again―a voice from below him. Someone screaming, a garbled mess of echoing, distant, inarticulate sounds that might have been words.
Is that Jay? he thought wildly, his heart shuddering. Oh, Christ, who is that? I can’t tell. Oh, Jesus…
He started down the stairs again, sidestepping until his hip brushed against the wall. He moved slowly, still in darkness, taking cautious steps, keeping himself tucked against the wall to guide himself. His instinct was to run, to turn on his flashlight and bolt down the stairs, but he knew if he did that, he could well give himself away.
And then M.K., Bethany and Jay are as good as dead, he thought. If they’re not already. Oh, Christ, just let me find them. Please God, let me find them.
* * *
Bethany found a small broken shard of metal, part of an old electrical conduit casing or something, and she tried to wedge it underneath the cuff binding Jay’s w
rist to the chair, to force it open. He was unconscious; his effort to raise his hips so she could reach his phone had tightened the noose too much, and he could hardly force air past it. She listened to the horrible, erratic, sodden sound of his labored gasps and struggled not to burst into tears, to yield to the itching, aching urge within her to simply fly into overwrought hysterics.
I have to get him out of here, she thought. She had spent a long time on her hands and knees against the floor, ducked beneath his chair, trying to work the wire free from his ankles in the hopes of lessening the noose’s draw against him from that side. But the man in the ski mask had apparently used a pair of pliers to wind the wire into a tangled knot around Jay’s legs. Bethany had pawed and tugged and scratched and dug, but had been unable to even loosen the end of the wire enough to unwind it.
The piece of metal slipped, popping unexpectedly up and away from the manacle cuff. It slid against Bethany’s palm, slicing deeply, and she cried out, stumbling back. She clutched at her wrist, watching in horror as a heavy line of blood oozed upward out of the wound, and then began to course down her arm. She uttered frightened, breathless, birdlike sounds as she quickly shucked out of her tank top, stripping down to her bra and wrapping the material around her palm to try and stave the flow of blood.
She heard a noise from the corridor beyond the room, and whirled, her eyes flying wide. She scurried to the doorway, but didn’t have to peer too far beyond to see the faint hint of glow along the walls to her right. The man in the ski mask was coming back.
“Oh, God!” she whimpered, and now her resolve crumbled, her steely determination, her fighting instincts. Now, she was just a frightened little girl again, all alone and helpless. She turned and looked wildly about. Where can I go? she thought, her heart hammering frantically. I can’t leave Uncle Jay! Oh, God, where can I go?
She glanced toward the only other avenue of exit or escape from the room―the darkened doorway behind the chairs where she and M.K. had been bound. She bolted for it, breathless and panicked. She darted across the threshold, out of the circumference of lamplight and into the shadows. She fell against the ground, and scuttled on her hands and knees, finding the wall and pressing herself against it. She crawled slowly, cautiously toward the doorway, the rectangle of dim light, and struggled to hold her hitching, hiccuping breath and listen.
She heard the clattering of metal wheels and knew he’d brought his tray of knives and tools with him again. She listened as the man in the ski mask uttered a funny little noise when he saw the two empty chairs. It was a sort of sputtering sound, not a word exactly, but a sort of stuttering, sticcato expulsion of voice and air like Porky Pig stuck on a tricky pronunciation in an old Bugs Bunny cartoon. Then she heard heavy footsteps stomping toward the doorway, and she shrank back, terrified.
“Where are they?” she heard the man in the ski mask ask, in a quiet voice. It was the first time she’d heard him say anything. That had been part of the absolute horror in his torture of Uncle Jay―the man had done so with a stoic and unflinching silence, never once uttering a single sound.
“Where are they?” the man said again, and then he began to repeat this over and over, his cadence growing faster, his pitch growing shriller, his tone louder and louder until he was screaming it, hoarse and furious. “Where are they? Where are they where are they where are they you son of a goddamn bitch, where are they?”
She jerked, shying again at a sudden, tremendous clatter as the man either kicked or threw the chairs she and M.K. had been sitting in across the room. She felt the wall against her cheek and ear thrum suddenly, sharply, as one of the chairs slammed into it on the opposite side, and she drew back, gasping, her eyes flooding with tears. Oh, God, Daddy, help us! she thought. Daddy, please, help us!
“Where are they?” the man screamed again, and Bethany heard Jay utter a croaking, breathless cry.
Oh, no, no, please, don’t hurt him anymore! Bethany thought, scrambling forward, her stomach and heart wrenching. Oh, God, please don’t let him hurt Jay again!
She risked a peek around the doorway and saw the man in the ski mask with his back to her. He’d clapped his large hand against Jay’s face, shoving his head back, and screamed directly at him, his nose nearly touching Jay’s. “Where are they? Where are those goddamn lousy whores? You tell me where they went, boy!”
He let Jay go, and Jay slumped in the chair. He had roused somewhat, and moaned feebly, semi-conscious. The man in the ski mask started to turn, and Bethany shrank back beyond the doorway once more, crouching in the shadows.
“Oh, you’re going to pay for that,” the man said. “You’re going to pay, boy, do you understand me? Now, we’ll get down to business.”
There was nothing but silence for a long, agonizing moment. Bethany moved slowly, carefully, easing away from the wall. She reached out with her hands, patting around her in the darkness, trying to find something, anything she could use as a weapon. I can’t let him hurt Uncle Jay. I can’t sit here and do nothing while that man murders him…!
“I’m going to cut off his fingers, one by one!” the man shouted out, and she froze, momentarily terrified and convinced that he’d seen her, that somehow he’d snuck up on her and discovered her hiding place. “Do you hear me, you rotten little whores? I’m going to cut off his goddamn fingers, and when I’m finished, I’m going to cram them into every single goddamn one of your stinking, whoring holes!”
His voice dropped lower, as if he spoke now to Jay, or himself, moreso than calling out to Bethany and M.K. “That’s what happens,” the man said. “That’s what happens when you try to fuck little girls. Little girls, you sick fuck. Look at you―old enough to be their goddamn father.”
He…he doesn’t know who Jay is, Bethany thought. He thinks Jay picked us up at the bar? That we were going home with him to…to… “Oh, God,” she whispered, aghast.
“But it doesn’t matter, because they’re already whores,” the man in the ski mask said. “Dressed like sluts, shaking their asses around―nothing but goddamn whores. I’ll teach them. I will hunt them down and teach them. Just like I’ll teach you.”
Bethany reached forward and jumped in surprise as her hands patted against something heavy, rough-edged. It was a piece of stone, something fallen from the ceiling or cleaved from the floor at some point, no bigger than both of her hands put together, but heavy enough that if she put some heft into it… I could hit him with it, she thought. I could hurt him, knock him out.
She took the rock in her hands and crawled back to the doorway. She chanced another peek and saw the man had his back to her. He lifted something in hand from the metal tray―a terrifying pair of stainless steel shears, with short but broad, curved metal blades. Jay saw it, too, and the realization of what the man meant to do with them must have registered in his semi-lucid, hurting mind, because he shook his head weakly. His hands twisted feebly, futilely against the cuffs.
Bethany crept out from the adjacent room. She slipped soundlessly against the floor, holding the rock between her hands, drawing it up and over her head.
“No…” Jay groaned, shaking his head more fervently as the man slipped his right index finger between the blades. “No, please…!”
Bethany rammed the broken fragment of stone down against the back of the wool ski mask with all of the might she could muster. The force knocked the man forward, sending him spilling to the ground, uttering a breathless grunt as he smacked, face-first against the concrete. The shears tumbled to the floor, the blades slipping away from Jay’s hand and leaving him unscathed. Bethany had a fleeting moment, less than a breath, to meet Jay’s dazed, frightened eyes, and then she yelped as the man in the ski mask grabbed her roughly by the ankle, jerking against her, knocking her down.
She slammed hard against her hip and shoulder, barking the side of her head against the dirty concrete. She could still feel his fingers closed, vice-like around her ankle, and she reaacted instinctively, drawing her other foot back and kicking
at him, driving the heel of her sandal into his face. “Let go of me!” she screamed.
She kicked at him again, but he sat up, wrestling with her, grabbing at her legs, her waist, her flailing hands. She shrieked, thrashing and bucking and kicking, but he launched himself at her, pouncing heavily atop her, crushing the breath from her. “Whore!” he screamed at her, his ski mask twisted lopsidedly now, revealing broad portions of his face, while nearly obscuring the view from his left eye. “You nasty stinking piece of shit bitch whore!”
His hands clamped around her throat, crushing against her, abruptly snuffing the wind from her. She gagged, her eyes bulging, her mouth wide open, but there was nothing, not even the teasing hint of breath that had sustained Jay for the past several hours. She couldn’t breathe; the man was strangling her, and as she slapped futilely against his hands, she saw tiny pinpoint of light sparkle and dance in her line of sight. Daddy…! she thought in wild, desperate terror. Daddy, please! Daddy help me!
“Why?” the man in the ski mask cried, his voice choked as if he was somehow on the verge of tears. “Why couldn’t you just stay a little girl? Why couldn’t you just be a little girl?”
She heard a sudden, sharp thunder and the man above her jerked, his hands slackening against her neck. Bethany whooped for air, dragging in a feeble mouthful, and heard a second shuddering report of thunder, and then a third, a fourth, a fifth, a sixth. With the seventh, something hot, wet and spongey slapped against her face―blood and brain matter―and she hitched in enough breath to shriek. The man in the ski mask fell sideways, spilling off of her, crashing to the floor in a lifeless heap.
Bethany screamed. She screamed and screamed, kicking at his fallen body, covering her face with her hands. She didn’t even realize her father was there, that somehow Paul had found her, and he’d unloaded his gun, emptying his clip into the man’s body, until she felt his hands against her.
She shrieked at his touch, kicking and flailing, but he pulled her against him, enfolding her in his arms, clutching her to his chest. “It’s alright,” he whispered in her ear, his voice hoarse and ragged, trembling with tears. “It’s Daddy, Bethie. It’s Daddy. I’m here. I’m here.”
