Sandman

by Sean Costello

  Jenny poured herself a glass of wine and headed for the bathtub in her room. Within minutes of hitting the steamy water she found herself drowsing. It was as if she’d incurred some huge sleep debt during the trying summer months and was being forced to pay it back at odd intervals during the day. She went with it for awhile, dreamily reliving the warm feelings of the day, then shook it off and cleaned herself up.

  After checking his messages and unplugging the phones, Richard went upstairs to get himself shaved, polished and scented. He’d decided during the hike back that, come hell or high water, he’d make his move with Jenny tonight. Of course, he’d made the same decision every night for the past two weeks and had caved in every time. In his heart he knew he’d wait until she gave him some clear signal—say, a neon sign above her door that said, “For God’s sake, Richard, take me.” But it was hard not to hope.

  Kim went to her attic bedroom to change. Before her discharge from the hospital Richard had set up a room for her on the main floor. He’d furnished it beautifully and had the builders install a variety of special aids for the handicapped in the adjoining bathroom—handles to pull yourself out of the tub with, a call button in case you fell and couldn’t get up—but Kim had opted for a corner of the sprawling, unfinished attic. Jenny had balked at the idea—too dusty, too cold, how will we hear you up there if you need us?—but Richard had supported her choice and Kim loved him all the more for it. It wasn’t much. A mattress on the floor, a reading lamp, a string to hang a few articles of clothing on, comfortable sweats mostly, a bookcase for her numerous books. But she loved it up here among the cobwebby beams and forgotten artifacts of a hundred and fifty years’ worth of tenants. She’d found some great old treasures up here, including a collection of dusty hardbacks by authors she never heard of, a functioning Edison gramophone that played plastic cylinders, a huge, bawdy masthead Kim was certain must once have adorned a pirate ship, and an actual stuffed polar bear, moth-eaten and ratty with age.

  Her things were up here, too, from the old house, but Kim had left most of them in the cardboard moving boxes. Aside from her books and a few items of clothing, there was nothing she really wanted. Her ‘accident’, as her mother referred to it, had altered the course of her life, sent it skewing off in a new and wonderful direction, and a part of her felt that, like the artifacts left layered in dust and obscurity up here, the accumulations of her old life were perhaps best forgotten. So much of that time was blurry now anyways, like shapes seen through a frosted window. Maybe she’d burn it all one day or have her mother haul it off to the Sally Ann.

  Kim pulled on some dry sweats. She almost fell trying to stuff her game leg into the pants and anger streaked through her like a flaming arrow. “Fucker,” she spat. “Fucker.”

  As she hopped on one foot, cursing and scowling, she saw her reflection in the mirror that leaned against the far wall and started to laugh. It came out of her in gales, and finally she did fall, landing on her backside in an ungainly, but unharmed heap.

  Still giggling, she finished pulling on her pants, then crossed the attic to the mirror, an enormous antique with a hand carved frame. She wiped it clean with a rag and stood in front of it, studying herself for the first time since...well, it felt like this was the first time. She had always avoided mirrors, even during the long weeks of physio in rooms ringed with reflective surfaces, but now, she let her eyes roam.

  Her hair was growing in nicely, she noted. A bit mousy, maybe, but she hadn’t had it shaped yet. Her eyes were sunken from the lack of sleep, but her face was slender, almost attractive, and her teeth were clean and straight. She couldn’t remember the braces all that well, though she knew she’d worn them...

  Now she lifted her chin to reveal a livid scar, a necklace of puckered skin—and in that instant it seemed to tighten with a leathery creak, and she remembered hanging from her father’s belt, the suffocation, the desperate yearning to be saved—

  by my daddy

  Then the world was spiraling out into blackness...

  Kim stumbled away from the mirror, gasping for air. The attic faded to gray around her and Kim was certain she was going to pass out...but with a few deep breaths the feeling subsided. When the color came back into the room she stumbled to her mattress and lay down, trying to catch her breath.

  The doctors had warned her that something like this might happen, some unexpected stimulus triggering memories from those lost weeks...but the warning did little to prepare her for this. In the brutal clarity of that instant—the space of an eyeblink—she had relived that spasm of mortal panic, had actually felt the belt snuffing out her life.

  But the worst of it, the feeling that lingered still, was the terrible need to be saved by her father. She saw his face in that remembered instant, floating in the bathroom doorway.

  She saw his satisfied smirk.

  “You bastard,” Kim whispered, her breath coming more easily now. “You sick bastard.”

  She lay there a while longer, letting the warmth and promise of her new life erase this jagged intrusion from the past. Then she went downstairs to join her folks.

  * * *

  Richard built a roaring fire and the three of them sat together on the couch, sipping hot chocolate from earthenware mugs and watching Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life. Kim had never seen anything so outrageous and she snorted and giggled through the entire film. Afterward, Richard suggested a second feature, but the girls begged off to bed. When they were gone Richard settled into the big wing-chair facing the fireplace, cursing his lack of nerve. He did not hear Jenny’s return.

  She rounded the chair and stood before him in a silk, ankle-length housecoat. Before Richard could react, she slipped the belt and let the housecoat fall open, revealing firelit glimpses of olive skin...a swell of breast, a gentle curve of belly, a long plunge of thigh beneath a triangle of enticing shadow. His eyes took her in, then rose to meet hers.

  “I was beginning to think you didn’t want me,” Jenny said.

  Richard drew the silk belt through its loops. “There’s no one in the world I want more,” he said. “I didn’t want to push you. I wanted to be sure you were ready.”

  Jenny shrugged out of the housecoat and let it fall to the floor. “I’m ready,” she said.

  Richard rose into the warm circle of her arms.

  * * *

  “Can I get you a pillow, sir?”

  Graeme Crowley opened his eyes. He took a moment to orient himself, then shook his head at the pretty flight attendant. “You could get me another beer, though.”

  “The service is closed,” the attendant said. Then, with a smile at Graeme’s injured puppy-dog expression, she whispered, “But I’ll see what I can do.”

  Graeme thought, Still got it, you old cocksmith. He glanced at his watch. Almost two AM, though the sky over the Pacific still had wisps of light in it. Then he remembered he was still on Ottawa time and they were chasing the sun.

  Graeme shook his head. He didn’t like the way he was feeling. That motherfucker Jack. Wouldn’t it frost his nuts if he gave Fransen a call and spelled out Jack’s itinerary for him? The notion had a certain appeal.

  The stew returned with his beer, her smile still warm and promising, but Graeme had lost interest. He took the beer and asked her for a phone.

  * * *

  By two AM the manhunt had taken them nowhere. Everyone Fransen knew of who Jack might run to had been questioned, apart from his wife and one or two others they hadn’t been able to locate yet, and hundreds of vehicles had been searched at dozens of major roadblocks. Everything that could be done was being done, but Fallon’s trail was stone cold.

  Now, in his office, Fransen stared at Jack’s image on his computer screen. Where are you, Jacky boy—

  “Call for you on three, Wes.”

  Fransen grabbed the phone. “Detective Fransen.”

  “He’s not gonna rabbit,” a gruff voice said. “He’s gonna stick around to play. And I’ve got a list of his
playmates.”

  “Who is this?” He signaled his assistant to start a trace.

  “Got a pen?”

  Fransen pulled out a note pad and pen.

  “Paul Daw,” the voice said. “The shrink. He’s back on his mommy’s tit. Nina Armstrong, the widow. She’s with her sister, Claudia Rider. And Fallon’s wife. She’s shacked up with that big deal artist, R. J. Kale.”

  “Who is this?”

  “Don’t waste time.”

  The line went dead.

  26

  THERE WAS A STORM THAT NIGHT, bringing more of that cold, pelting rain, and Jenny awoke with the first thunderclap. Lightning bathed the room in a brilliant shutterflash, printing a negative of the windows on her retinas. Dazzled, she sat up in the dark, rubbing gooseflesh off the backs of her arms. Almost immediately the night exploded again, but this time Jenny thought she heard something else, a distant, rhythmic rapping. Her first thought was of Kim, Kim’s heels drumming the shower wall. There had been a storm that night, too. But this sound was different, mechanical and insistent.

  The door, Jenny realized. There’s someone at the door.

  She glanced at the digital clock in Richard’s bedroom: 4:13 AM. Who in God’s name would be at the door at this hour? In this kind of weather?

  She poked Richard’s shoulder, bringing him awake.

  “There’s someone at the door,” she told him.

  “Are you sure?” Then he heard it, too.

  He pulled on a pair of sweat pants and headed for the door. After a moment’s hesitation, Jenny grabbed her housecoat and followed him. He gave her a game smile as he switched on the light in the hall, but he was clearly alarmed. A caller at this time of night seldom meant good news.

  Jenny stuck close to him going down the stairs. There was a flicker of lightning as he thumbed the light switch in the foyer, giving the impression that the lights had come on, but an instant later the foyer was again steeped in darkness. Now the light upstairs was out, too.

  “Great,” Richard said. “There goes the power.”

  As he twisted the deadbolt he glanced through the sidelight onto the porch. In the same instant lightning flashed again, a shivering, sustained bolt, and Richard jerked back from the glass. “Jesus,” he said.

  Jenny tried to look over his shoulder and he blocked her way. “What is it?” she said.

  Richard said nothing, but he was breathing hard.

  “Richard, you’re scaring me.”

  “Sorry, Jen. It’s nothing. Just a sick prank. Go back upstairs—”

  Jenny pulled away from him and moved to the sidelight—and it was as if in that instant the storm chose both to illuminate and bear witness to her horror. A sizzling fork of electricity threw the porch into stark relief.

  And there, on the raw stone, sat a miniature coffin, white as bone, clotted with earth and sod. Rain slanted in over the railing and spattered it. Then it was dark again.

  Jenny’s hands flew to her abdomen, forming a V over her womb as her body recalled the unstoppable expulsion. Sobbing, she opened the door.

  “Jenny, don’t—”

  But she was out on the porch now, the wind snapping at her housecoat, drenching her with cold autumn rain. She had to see.

  She knelt by the tiny casket and lifted the lid.

  * * *

  Fransen stood over the tangled bodies of Paul Daw and his mother, trying to keep his Oxfords out of the blood. He was on a two-way with the commander of the emergency task force he’d dispatched to Claudia Rider’s home.

  “Signs of forced entry,” said a static-laced voice. “Kicked the door clean off the hinges. Okay, we’re inside...”

  In the silence that followed Fransen thought, If you’ve hurt those two little boys.... He signaled his second in command. “Any word on the artist?”

  “There’s no one at the studio on Sussex, but a neighbor says he doesn’t live there anymore. Says he’s got some big place out in the country now, doesn’t know where. DMV shows him at the Sussex address.”

  “Fabulous,” Fransen said. He took a hit off his inhaler. “Okay, tell them to go into the studio. Look for a phone number. If he’s got one of those quick dial jobs, tell them to punch through all of those. Look for mail, anything with a rural address on it. Have—”

  The voice on Fransen’s two-way said, “Oh, shit,” and Fransen shuddered at its tone. “Jesus Christ...”

  * * *

  Kim stood on the roof of the manor, on the widow’s walk, heart thumping as twin storm fronts converged before her eyes. Had anyone seen her up there, hunched against the rain in a hooded slicker, they might have thought of the old Frankenstein movies, the crazed doctor harnessing the power of the storm for his own deranged purposes.

  Sleep had eluded her, as it so often did these days, but tonight she didn’t mind. Because of the storm. It fascinated her. The savage crack of thunder, the jagged fury of the lightning, the purple-black clouds roiling low overhead. She remembered being afraid of storms, but the memory had a hazy, disconnected quality, like so many of her memories now.

  Lightning webbed the sky, its center pillar plowing into the bush a hundred yards from the house. Kim could smell the ozone. Momentarily dazzled, she looked away, blinking down into the turn-around.

  Richard’s 4-Runner was down there and the hood was up. Kim thought her eyes must be playing tricks on her, because in that last bright flicker she thought she’d seen a man hunched over the exposed engine. Curious, she squinted down through the strobing night...but now there was nobody there. She was ready to write it off to her imagination when she heard a sharp rapping sound, then saw a man dart around the side of the house. She saw him only for an instant, but in that instant she saw him clear as day.

  “Dad?” Kim said, thunder swallowing the word.

  * * *

  Kneeling over the satin-lined coffin, Jenny said, “Jack, you bastard. You cruel bastard...”

  Richard stepped onto the porch, the lid of the coffin screening his view of its contents. “Jen, come back inside,” he said. “I’ll get dressed and get rid of that thing. It must’ve been kids. Bored farm kids. Jack’s in jail.”

  Jenny reached into the casket and removed its contents. Richard recoiled at the sight of it.

  “It’s Peach,” Jenny said, holding the carcass out for Richard to see. “It’s my cat.”

  Pelt and bone, the animal had obviously been starved to death, then frozen to arrest its decay. Frost still hazed its yellow eyes.

  “Oh, shit,” Richard said. He grabbed Jenny’s arm and started pulling her toward the open door. Jenny lost her grip on the cat and it fell stiffly to the porch. She bent to pick it up and Richard pulled harder on her arm. “Jen, we’ve got to get back inside. He must be out here someplace.”

  That snapped her out of it. She grabbed Richard’s wrist, darting through the door ahead of him, saying, “We’ve got to get Kim and get out of here.”

  Richard slammed the door behind them, twisted the bolt—and the foyer light came on. “Wait here,” he said.

  Before Jenny could respond, Richard took off toward the kitchen. She heard him rustling around out there and thought of the phone. She ran to the nearest extension and picked up the receiver. No dial tone. And they hadn’t charged Richard’s cell.

  Heart triphammering, she ran back to the foyer, Richard standing there now in his dripping sweat pants, clutching a shotgun.

  “Let that fucker try something now.”

  There was a sound at the top of the curving stairwell, a fleshy sound, like the thump of a human heel. Jenny turned to it first, then Richard, raising the shotgun to a ready position.

  Something rolled out of the darkness up there, wrapped in gauze stained wetly black, and as it thumped down the steps toward them it unfurled, the free end of the gauze trailing back into the hall. When it reached the halfway point, almost bouncing now, Jenny realized the gauze wasn’t black after all.

  It was red.

  Gathering speed
, Paul’s severed head struck the foyer tiles and came to rest against Jenny’s ankle. Screaming, she danced away from its lidless eyes, the raw holes where there should have been ears, the lipless rictus of its grin. She slammed into Richard and he lost his grip on the shotgun.

  From the top of the stairs Jack said, “Pathetic,” and shot Richard in the knee, dropping him to the floor.

  “Run,” Richard screamed. “Jenny, run.”

  Jenny hesitated, reaching for Richard, then bolted for the back of the house, praying Kim had stayed put in the attic. On her way through the kitchen she grabbed a paring knife off the counter, then slammed out through the back door, into the yard and the rain-drenched forest beyond.

  As the woods swallowed her, Jenny heard another muffled gunshot. Then Jack’s voice, a low and taunting croon, coming from the back porch.

  “Jenny. Oh, Jenny...”

  “Richard...” Jenny whispered, and plunged into the trees.

  * * *

  Kim huddled in a dark corner of the attic, her yellow slicker dripping rainwater into creeping runners on the floor. Around her lay a litter of moving boxes, and between her feet, a battered shoebox containing her most secret things.

  From before.

  In her right hand she clutched Jack’s palm-sized Colt .380, with a full clip of seven rounds plus one in the chamber. The safety was off, Kim’s finger tight against the trigger. She hadn’t remembered taking the gun until she saw him in the yard.

  If you come up here I’ll shoot you in the face.

  Kim heard the first blunted gunshot and flinched. Her mother’s scream came next, blending with Richard’s.

  “Mom...”

  Then the second shot came and Kim’s body went rigid. A moment later she heard a voice from outside, a voice she knew well.

  “Jenny. Oh, Jenny...”

  Kim ran to the porthole window overlooking the backyard and saw her mother in a white housecoat, gliding wraithlike into the forest. A few moments later she saw Jack stride in after her.