The Scream Catcher

by Vincent Zandri

  When sleep finally comes, Jude does not find peace.

  In its place, he sees the faces of the dead.

  The Burns victims stand at the end of his bed, the fair-haired mother in her pajamas, exit wound in her cheek red and purple where the broken skin flaps over itself; the smaller daughter still wearing blond pigtails, the wound in her forehead dripping blood. Jude watches their faces as they open and close their mouths as if wanting desperately to say something to him. Maybe they are trying to issue a warning. In his dream, he sees himself lying in bed. He’s raising himself up, holding out his hands for the mother and daughter. In turn, they are holding their arms out for him. In his sleep, Jude is very afraid because he cannot be sure who is trying to save who . . .

  Startled awake, Jude opens his eyes fully aware that the dream is over, but somehow still feeling its effects and its paralyzing fear. He finds himself caught up in the grips of the demon, trapped in a strange place somewhere between the medicated sleep state and the conscious state.

  Outside the window, he hears the wail of a cat above the steady rain.

  It sounds horribly enough like a baby in pain, maybe even dying. His heart beats rapidly, even though his body is sedated, exhausted. He can’t help but think that Lennox is standing right outside his home. Maybe even inside his bedroom. Hector “the Black Dragon” Lennox eyeing Jude and his pregnant wife while they sleep, an iPhone in one hand and a .22 caliber pistol in the other.

  “Scream. For. Me.”

  The cat wails again.

  The clouds burst with rain.

  Jude closes his eyes.

  Despite a pounding heart, he begins to drift.

  Like a man hopelessly sinking into the lake’s deepest, darkest waters, it’s not long before he is gone.

  Assembly Point Peninsula

  Wednesday, 4:50 A.M.

  He’s up before the alarm.

  In the bathroom off the bedroom, he peers into the mirror, into a tired face covered in stubble. He yanks the old gauze bandage off his head and observes the butterfly bandage. It’s healing nicely. For a brief moment, Jude considers going without a new dressing, but per doctor’s orders, he applies a new piece of gauze held in place with two strips of white surgical tape.

  Back in the bedroom, he slips into his sweats and steps into his running shoes.

  The sweats feel strange on his body. He wore them the previous day. All day. They’ve been sweated in, bled in, and rained on. Now they feel different somehow. Dry but far too stiff. But then, maybe the change is coming from himself, from deep down inside.

  His life changed yesterday.

  Today will bring more of it.

  Outside in the dark second floor hall, he faces his son’s closed bedroom door. Ears bristling to a cacophony of automatic gunfire, the ex-cop opens the door only to discover the bushy-haired ten year old sitting up in bed, a wireless video game controller gripped in both hands.

  As though oblivious to his fathers unexpected entrance, the boy’s wide eyes remain fixed intently on a TV positioned on a stand directly across from the foot of the bed. On the monitor, a computer animated man wearing sunglasses and dressed in policeman’s uniform blues is shooting a bad guy with an automatic. When the bad guy’s head explodes in a cloud of blood and brain matter, its torso dropping to the floor, the tell-tale words “YOU WIN” fill the screen.

  “Jack, it’s four-thirty in the morning. A little early to be killing people.”

  Thumbing pause, the boy turns to his father. He’s smiling, round-faced but raccoon-eyed tired.

  “He’s not really dead, dad,” the boy is quick to point out. But then just as quick he cocks his head in order to correct himself. “Well, he’s dead all right. But he’ll be alive again in the next game. Get it?”

  “Oh, you mean he’ll have a new head . . . Just like in real life.”

  Jack, squinting.

  “Funny, dad.”

  Taking a few steps into the bedroom, Jude steals a quick glance at the posters thumb-tacked to the log walls. Innocent posters for an innocent boy. Sponge Bob Squarepants, the planets of the solar system, assorted dinosaurs. The brilliant colors of the posters are illuminated only by the television’s radiance.

  As a father, Jude knows he has two options for handling the situation. He can either reprimand the boy for being up so early in the morning playing a video game. Or, he can go another route.

  “You feeling sick?” he asks, setting the back of his hand onto the boy’s cool brow.

  Jack shakes his head.

  “Just can’t sleep is all.”

  Jude takes a seat on the edge of the bed, holds out his hand, palm up. Without protest, Jack sets the controller into it. As he slides back under the blanket, Jude can’t help but notice the moist coating that covers much of the smooth plastic—residue from tense palms and fingers.

  “Listen,” Jude offers. “Is this all about the dark monster again? Because you and me, we know how to deal with the mythical Lake George dark monster.”

  Smiling, the boy pulls the blanket up tight beneath his chin.

  “I can’t see nothing in the dark,” he states, kid voice made purposely low as if to imitate a big brave man.

  “And if you can’t see nothing in the dark, then the dark monster must be one big giant nothing. And it’s a law of physics that nothing can’t hurt us.”

  Jack, now wearing a sleepy ear-to-ear smile.

  “No dark monster’s round here,” he adds.

  “For immediate release: all dark monsters are hereby banished from planet earth.”

  Rising, Jude flips off the TV, heads for the open bedroom door.

  “You get some sleep. When I get back from my run, I’ll make you some eggs.”

  “And well done bacon.”

  A loon cries out from the lake. The high-pitched wail causes the skin on the back of Jude’s neck to tingle. As he approaches the door, Jack presses himself into his pillow, tucks the blanket tight over his head, leaving only a round face exposed to the dark.

  “Dad,” he says.

  “What is it?”

  “What do you think it’s like when you really die?”

  Jude finds himself glancing at the video game controller on the desk. In his mind he sees the head of that bad guy explode. At the same time, he feels his throat close up.

  “It’s like going to sleep, I imagine. Only, you don’t wake up to play again.”

  The boy is strangely silent as though trying to comprehend not waking up.

  “Oh,” he says finally.

  “Good night, Mr. Jack.”

  “Night, Dad.”

  On his way out, Jude closes the door behind him.

  As he makes his way down the hall towards the home’s dark interior, he feels the need to fight off the demon inside him with a slow, calm breath.

  In the kitchen, he pours a glass of orange juice, then pulls apart an English muffin, pops it in the toaster. The muffin toasted, he butters it, sets it and the juice down onto the kitchen table. He turns on the kitchen television, changes it to a new station based in Glens Falls that carries the local twenty-four hour news. While slowly eating the English muffin, he watches a news report about a car being fished from the Hudson.

  The caption beneath the video reads “Getaway vehicle located.”

  Maybe it isn’t all that easy to make out in the video since the recording was shot in the deep night with only bright mobile spotlights for illumination, but as the crane hoists the car up and out of the water, Jude can see that the model and make is a Lexus sedan. Color silver.

  The exact car it turns out, that Lennox made his getaway in.

  Just the site of the car and all those Lake George firemen, state police, and emergency technicians surrounding it as it is slowly lowered to the banks, makes the demon perk up. It makes his heart pump, his breathing shallow. This much he knows: now that the car has been discovered it will be scoured for evidence. They will try and determine to whom the car was registered.<
br />
  Mack must be all over the new development.

  For a moment, he considers calling his father for an update. But then, Mack probably had a rough night too. A night without much sleep.

  Jude would wake up a sleeping bear before waking his stepfather.

  As the daylight begins to emerge from over the mountains to the east, he chews the final bit of English muffin, drinks the last swallow of juice. He makes his way out the front door where he is greeted by the overcast sky and a misty rain. He steps down off the porch, stretches his legs while breathing in the cool, almost metallic smell of the North Country air. Maybe it has something to do with the discovery of Lennox’s sedan, but the clean air energizes him, fills him with an odd but welcome sense of optimism.

  Turning, he spots the Jeep-Cruiser parked up past the end of the gravel drive along the hard-packed gravel Assembly Point Road. Through the side window, he can make out the newly assigned personal witness protection body guard. The super cop himself: Ray Fuentes. With the interior light on in the Jeep, Jude can see that his old friend is wearing his larger than large Cheshire cat smile on his round face.

  That smile tells him Ray’s got doughnuts.

  Making his way through the mist to the Jeep, Jude walks around to the driver’s side, knuckle-taps the window. Even before Ray rolls it down, he can see the large Styrofoam cup of Dunkin Donuts coffee that rests in the center console holder. Beside it, on the empty shotgun seat, is an open box of doughnuts. Not much in the way of variety. Cinnamon mostly, along with a few strawberry frosted for a little added color.

  “You gonna eat that whole box now, copper?”

  Fuentes shakes his head, carefully sips the coffee, sets it back down in the holder.

  “I prefer to make the memories last,” the big man smiles.

  Reaching around for the box, he invitingly holds it up for Jude.

  “After my run.”

  “Health snob.”

  “I’ll be back in thirty.”

  “Unh uh, pal,” Fuentes barks, round head now part way out the open window. “My orders—and they come directly from Mack—are to restrict all access beyond this point. Unless that is, you’re accompanied by either me or your father. Same goes for the wife and child.”

  It’s official. Jude feels sufficiently trapped. But then, he knows the deal—knows enough not to argue about it anyway.

  “Prisoner in my own home, huh?”

  Just like the scream catcher.

  “You got a treadmill inside the basement gym of yours?”

  “Treadmills are boring, Ray.”

  “Sure you don’t want a doughnut?”

  The rain picks up in intensity. Jude begins making his way back towards the top of the drive when he hears, “Not so fast, Shakespeare.”

  His reaction is automatic. He turns quick, makes his way back to the Jeep.

  Looking directly up into Jude’s face, Fuentes says, “Your father may not open his mouth up about it. But he’s damn proud of what you’re doing—”

  “—Ray.”

  “Hold on a minute. You and I both know, not many people would agree to testify against someone like Lennox. Especially when a numb nuts like Mann not only released him on conditional bail, but thinks this whole Sweeney’s gym thing is a case of mistaken identity.”

  Jude feels the rain water pouring down the sides of his face. He feels it soaking the new bandage on his head. Maybe he’s listening to the words that come from his old friend’s mouth, but he is feeling them inside his tight chest. It’s as if he swallowed fish hooks for breakfast.

  “What do you think, Ray? You think I’m doing the right thing?”

  “I think you have to do what’s right for your family first, what’s right for yourself second. But you were a cop, just like me. I also think you have to do what’s right for all the innocent people of the world, in a Batman and Robin sort of way.”

  “And what about Mack? Where does my old man fit into this ‘doing the right thing’ equation?”

  “The old Captain considers you his own true flesh and blood. He’s just a petrified as you must be.”

  “But right is right. Isn’t that what this is all about?”

  Ray says nothing . . . for a change. Because questions like these don’t have answers. Answers you want to hear anyway.

  Maybe the rain is beginning to soak through his sweats for the second time in as many days, but Jude finds himself paralyzed. This paralysis has nothing to do with fear. Rather, it has everything to do with a distant memory.

  It’s 1977, the blue uniformed officer pulls Jude away from his mother and father where they lay slain in the church pew by the bullets of an assassin disguised as a New York City cop. The young officer must physically yank Jude off the bodies, carry him outside the church while the emergency medical technicians take over the kill scene and the police cordon off the old Bronx church with yellow crime scene tape.

  The young officer brings Jude outside onto the snowy city sidewalk. He bends at the knees, wipes away falling tears with the tips of his black leather gloves, stares into Jude’s face, assures him everything is going to be alright, that his dad did a heroic thing by testifying against the bad New York police.

  They did the right thing.

  Now, Officer David Parish and his wife have paid the ultimate price. The young officer is only sad that their son had to witness the murders on Christmas Eve of all days. But now, the young officer is going to take Jude away from there. He’s going to drive the boy upstate where it will be safe; where no one will come after him. Upstate to Lake George.

  Like all NYPD cops, the young officer’s name is embossed onto a plastic nameplate that’s been pinned to a barrel chest. The name is James Mack . . .

  A slap on the Jeep door snaps Jude out of his spell.

  “It’s rainin’ cats and dogs, Shakespeare. Better get back inside the house before you catch your death.”

  . . . catch your death.

  Jude considers Ray’s choice of words all the way down the drive to his home.

  Assembly Point Peninsula

  Wednesday, 6:15 A.M.

  Three uninspired treadmill miles later, Jude stands inside the kitchen still dripping sweat. The good smell of brewing coffee fills his senses. Outside the picture window, rain pours steadily down onto the white-capped lake. With Rosie and Jack still nestled in their beds, he heads out the front door, retrieves the Glens Falls Eagle morning edition, carries it with him back to the kitchen.

  The headline hits home.

  “Murder Comes to Paradise!”

  Below the bold print is an entire half page devoted to the hunt-and-destroy killing of Andrew Manion, the Glens Falls convenient store owner executed in cold blood outside Sweeney’s Gym. The victim’s name has been released in defiance of the gag order. Or so Jude deduces. Consistent with the gag order, however, there’s no mention of the suspected perp, the reporter preferring to use the term “Unknown Suspect” in place of a name.

  Clever.

  The article goes on to speculate a possible connection to the first two, as of now unsolved, “pursuit style” murders that took place in Lake George over the past four years. At the same time, there is no specific mention of the name Lennox or, for that matter, Christian Barter. No mention of conditional bail, no mention of the surveillance ankle bracelet; no mention of a former L.G.P.D. cop as the county’s number one witness. So much for news written around the constitutionally binding rules of a gag order.

  Jude pours his first cup of coffee.

  The phone rings, causing him a start.

  The ex-cop picks it up to Mack’s voice, the old Captain informing his son that he will be at the house to pick him up in a half hour. They are scheduled to meet Blanchfield first thing in back of Sweeney’s Gym.

  Jude’s mind is a whirlwind of activity. He wants to ask his father if he read the paper or caught the televised news. But the old Captain seems in too much of a rush. No time for talk.

  Jude tell
s him he’ll be “ready and waiting in thirty.”

  Mack hangs up. No goodbye.

  Jude swallows a breath, tries to calm his beating heart. Thirty minutes. Just enough time to down a cup of coffee, maybe check his email, get cleaned up.

  Coffee cup in hand, he enters his writing study, sits down in front of the laptop, logs onto his online AOL account. Although he isn’t expecting anything in particular, he’s been anticipating a message from his literary agent detailing his royalty statement for January through July. He’s been expecting a check since the first of August. That check will determine the Parish household budget for the upcoming Fall season.

  The email isn’t there. Just the usual junk or spam. All of it useless, except for one legitimate message that catches Jude’s attention. The address listed is one he’s never received before. And if it were not for the subject heading of, “LENNOX,” he might’ve decided to delete it along with the spam.

  Opening the email he reads:

  Dear Mr. Parish,

  Do not believe that you are well protected.

  Nothing could be further from the truth.

  Watch out for your family.

  Watch your back.

  Fox

  Pulse pumping, Jude rereads the message three times, rapid succession. Each time he reads it, it says the same thing. Each time he reads it he finds himself growing more anxious. Should he reply to the email? Or should he let it go ignored? He has no idea who the sender might be. Who the hell calls him or herself “Fox?” Not even tracing the e-mail’s source reveals much of anything other than the time of transmission.

  Six A.M. that very morning.

  Jude fingers Reply, writes:

  Dear Fox,

  Who are you?

  Jude.

  He sits. Waits for an answer. The rain picks up. Coffee goes ignored, turns cold. When nothing comes through, Jude is startled to hear a horn honking outside the house. When Jack comes running into the studio, hair sticking up from sleep, he shouts, “Grandpa Mack’s outside, Dad.”

  “Shit,” Jude slips. “Is it that late?”