Gary Brandner

by Doomstalker (v2. 0) (epub)

  "Do you two know each other?" Kettering said.

  "I've seen the lady on television," said Protius.

  "I'm not working now," Charity explained.

  "Nice to meet you nonprofessionally." Protius offered his hand. Charity took it.

  The doctor walked over and sat on the edge of his desk. He folded his arms and waited.

  "I guess you'd like to know why I'm here," Kettering said.

  "I'll admit I'm a little curious."

  "You know that hypnotism business we talked about?"

  "I remember."

  "Well, I've been thinking about it, and I might be ready to try it."

  "He is ready to try it," Charity amended.

  "Let's talk about it," Protius said. "Tell me what you'd like to accomplish."

  Feeling a little foolish, Kettering told the psychiatrist what he hoped to bring up out of his childhood memory. As he talked, he felt his nerves begin to loosen just a little.

  Protius nodded from time to time and walked back to sit behind the desk. He took notes as he listened.

  When Kettering paused for a moment, he said, "You were six years old at the time all this happened?"

  "That's right. Most of that day is as clear in my memory as if it were yesterday. All except the details of what happened inside the room with my father and ... whoever was with him. That's where I kind of blank out."

  "And that's the part you want to see?"

  "If you can do it."

  "Hey, you're the one who's going to do it. If there's something stuck in your memory, you are the one who will have to dig it out. All I am is a guide."

  "All right, you can skip the disclaimers. When will you have time to do it?"

  "Whenever you're ready."

  "You mean right now?"

  "Any reason why not?"

  Kettering could not think of one.

  "Do you want me to leave?" Charity asked.

  "You're not going to make me do anything disgusting, are you, Doc?"

  "Kettering - " he began.

  "Only kidding." He turned to Charity. "You bought into the whole game, so you might as well stay and watch."

  She touched his hand lightly and moved off to a straight-backed chair by the door. "I'll sit over here out of the way."

  Dr. Protius adjusted the curtains to dim the light in the room. "Go ahead and sit down, Brian. Get comfortable."

  "Have you got one of those endless spiral things for me to stare at?"

  "I've got one. I also have a nice crystal on a chain that catches the light as I swing it back and forth, back and forth like a pendulum."

  Kettering caught himself following the movement of Protius's hand and forced his attention back to the doctor's face.

  "But I don't think we'll use any of that stuff." He looked around the room. "If you want to focus on something, try that picture on the wall you're facing ... the one with the three-masted schooner."

  Kettering leaned back and looked at the picture. Wind filled the sails as the boat rode high on a choppy sea. White puffy clouds floated in a bright blue sky.

  Protius said. "A nice print. One of my personal favorites. Just off the bow, a little above it, there's a sea gull. See it?"

  "Mm-hmm."

  "It's a nice restful, relaxed-looking bird. Sailing comfortably along on the breeze. Why don't you concentrate on that. Take a deep breath, all the way in. Let it out slowly. Good. Another."

  Kettering breathed deeply, keeping his eyes on the painted sea gull. "That's all? I just watch the birdie and breathe?"

  "That's about it. Relax and get comfortable. Move around if you want to."

  "What do you do?"

  "I just sit here and talk. You can listen to my voice and watch the sea gull. Watch it floating there, motionless, floating on nothing. Put yourself in the picture there with the sea gull and listen to my voice."

  Kettering sat back in the soft, yielding leather and thought, He's not going to be able to do this. No way I'm going under.

  But he figured he might as well cooperate as long as he was here. So he concentrated on the sea gull, and he listened to Protius's voice, and pretty soon he realized he was feeling all nice and comfortable and, for the first time in many days, really relaxed.

  "Relaxed," echoed the doctor's voice. "And comfortable. You are so relaxed, and so comfortable. Like the sea gull. Floating. Floating easily and effortlessly. You can close your eyes if you want to. They may be a little heavy. You can close your eyes, but you will still see the gull, and you will still hear my voice."

  As a matter of fact, Kettering's eyelids were feeling heavy. It felt good to close them for a minute. He knew he could open them again anytime he wanted to, but just for a minute it felt good.

  "You can still see the gull," Protius droned. "You can be there with the gull. Floating on nothing, held aloft by the warm, gentle wind. A wind that carries you softly, safely, comfortably back. Back through time. Back through the years. Back. Back."

  I might as well go along with it, Kettering thought. It can't do any harm. And in truth, it did almost seem as though he had moved into the picture with the gull. He felt very comfortable and very relaxed. And the wind was warm and gentle. And it carried him back.

  It was pleasant, pleasant and relaxing to contemplate the scenes of his past. Sure, Kettering knew what was happening. Dr. Protius was gently suggesting what he should see. The good times and the good feelings.

  There was the friendship with his fellow police officers, a special bond that civilians could never know. There were the times in his marriage, few though they might have been, when he and Mavis were happy and seemingly in sync. He felt again the pride he had known when Trevor as a high school freshman came home with all A's on his report card. And when he won his letter in track. Never mind the other stuff, the arguments, the bad scenes. Dr. Protius guided him past those to the happy times. Kettering was willing enough to go along.

  There were quick cuts going further back, like a reversed movie montage, of the excitement of his arrival in California, some of the remembered good days when he was starting out with the Columbus police force. Graduation from OSU, and his undergraduate days kidding around in the fraternity. A couple of special dates with his first girlfriend as a teenager, when he lived with Aunt Alice in Milwaukee.

  Dr. Protius carried him quickly over the darkness of the last years with his mother and sister in Prescott, and finally brought him to the summer afternoon of the church picnic, the bike ride home, and what happened there.

  "You remember parking your bike out in front of the house."

  "Yes."

  "And you climbed up on the porch," said Dr. Protius in his deep, restful voice.

  "I remember." He did too. Vividly. He could almost hear the creak of the third step - the one his father never did get around to fixing.

  "You are there now, Brian. You are six years old. You are on the porch of your parents' home on Bailey Street in Prescott."

  Kettering knew where he was, of course. He was sitting in a chair in the office of Dr. Edmund Protius of the West Valley Police Department. And he sure as hell was not six years old. He was ... he was ... well, what did it matter? It was easy enough to go along with the doctor's voice.

  The boards of the porch were clearly definable through the soles of his Keds. He would be due for a new pair soon. It seemed that by the time he got a new pair broken in, the soles were wearing thin.

  "You hear the voices, Brian. The voices of your father and the other man." Dr. Protius must have moved his chair. He sounded a lot farther away. And growing fainter.

  Much louder were the voices of Reverend Kettering and the pizza man. There was anger, curses, threats. Brian squirmed uncomfortably in the leather chair as the boy squirmed there on the porch of his home.

  "Look in the window, Brian."

  "No."

  "Nothing can hurt you. You're safe now. You know you're safe, don't you?"

  "Yes."

  "Look in the
window."

  He looked. His father, lean and gangly, stood facing ... Mr. Riggio. The pizza man.

  But the Mr. Riggio Brian saw now as he peered through the window into his front room was not the laughing, friendly man the kids all liked. The pizza man looked dark and dangerous. No hint of a smile showed in his flashing eyes and bared teeth. He and Reverend Kettering faced each other with a passion that raised goose bumps on the boy's flesh.

  Brian ducked down below the windowsill, where he could not be seen from inside, and listened.

  The voices. His father's, and the other, which now had a face.

  "I know who you are," his father was saying.

  "You're bluffing," Riggio said in a low rumble.

  "I have suspected for a long time, and now I have proof."

  "You're crazy, preacher. You've been listening to your own sermons."

  The Reverend Kettering continued as though the other man had not spoken. "I know who you are and where you come from. I know why you are here. It's the children. You're here to take our children. Steal their souls."

  "That's Sunday School talk. God's bullshit."

  "It's reality."

  The voice of the pizza man deepened even more. The pauses between his words crackled with unspoken threats.

  "Suppose you are right. Suppose your crazy Bible-thumping ideas about me are right. Where does that leave you? What do you think you're going to do about it, preacher?"

  Shivering with excitement, Brian cautiously raised his head to peek into the living room again. He saw his father push the glasses back up on his narrow nose in a gesture Brian had seen a thousand times. The Reverend Kettering, though not a husky man, was tall, and in Brian's mind his father had always been as big as anybody. Now the size difference between him and the black-browed pizza man made him look puny.

  "I am going to destroy you," said his father.

  Riggio laughed, not the friendly ho-ho-ho he used at the House of Pizza, but a deep, ugly bark with no humor in it.

  "You have no more chance than - what's the saying? - a snowball in Hell. I only wish I could be there to see you stand before your little flock and tell them to their sheep faces that a fiend from the abyss walks among them, right here in Prescott, Indiana."

  Riggio broke off into his barking laugh, then continued. "What do you think their reaction will be? These fine, middle-American, God-fearing Christian Republicans don't want to hear that. They want to hear you tell them comfortable lies about the lovely afterlife that awaits them, as long as they are generous when the Sunday collection plate comes around. You start giving them hellfire and brimstone and they'll laugh you out of your own church. They'll have you put away."

  Kettering shook his head. "You didn't hear me. I did not say I will expose you. I know better than to try to convince people now that you are what you are. No, I said I will destroy you."

  As Riggio growled a reply, something moved just at the edge of Brian's vision. He turned quickly and saw, or thought he saw something. A man? Something. High, hunched shoulders, long, dangling arms with talons for fingers. It was there for an instant and it was gone. But in that instant, before six-year-old Brian Kettering turned back to the drama playing out in his living room, the faceless, menacing image burned itself into his memory.

  Deep in the boy's mind, it already had a name.

  Doomstalker.

  Chapter 30

  The scene swam before the boy's eyes. The man's muscles tensed. He was cold, then hot, then cold again.

  The soothing voice of Dr. Protius: "It's all right, Brian. You're safe. You're in my office. Relaxed and comfortable. Deep breaths. Nothing can reach you now. You know exactly where you are. You can remember everything we've been doing. Anytime you want to come back, you can. Nothing is holding you. We will continue only if you want to."

  Kettering pulled oxygen deep into his lungs, held it, let it out. He felt his muscles loosen up, his nerves slacken. He was in control. He said, "Yes, let's do it all."

  "Good. Now you're going to go back there. Back to your house on Bailey Street. You are a little boy again. You are six years old, kneeling on your porch, listening to the voices inside. Can you hear them now, Brian?"

  The man nodded. The little boy heard.

  The voices of his father and Mr. Riggio seemed to crackle and boom with the tension of the moment.

  "You're finished here," said the Reverend Kettering.

  "Don't be foolish," Riggio answered. "You can't hurt me."

  "I have the weapon that will destroy you."

  Riggio's laugh was an ugly rumble. "There is no such weapon. Not on this earth."

  "There is," said Kettering, "for one who knows how to use it. And I know."

  "You would not attack me with a gun or a knife. You are not that stupid."

  "No, I am not. I would not fight you as I would a man."

  A rumbling laugh. "Surely you are not going to brandish a crucifix. Even you must know the folly of that old myth."

  "No, not a crucifix. The power of the Christian cross is great, and I respect it. I also know its limitations, and that the strength of your evil comes from a more ancient source."

  "More ancient and more powerful than anything you can use against me."

  "Perhaps not. My weapon is ancient too. It came into my possession years ago, before I truly understood its power."

  Brian rose cautiously from his crouch and peered over the windowsill. His father, dressed in the warm-up jacket and chinos he had worn to the picnic, was holding something in his right hand, down below the boy's line of vision.

  "You are all talk, preacher. Where is this weapon?"

  The Reverend Kettering raised his right arm. Whatever he held was still out of sight.

  "Here," he said.

  The thick lips of the pizza man twisted into an ugly grimace.

  "That does not even belong to your religion."

  "It belongs to a faith more ancient than mine. In the timeless struggle against you and your master, all religions are one."

  "You are a fool! Religions are myths and fairy tales. Your own as much as the others. Mine is the true power, as any study of history will tell you. Now give me that toy."

  "Never."

  "Hand it over. It is useless to you. Give it to me and perhaps we can strike some bargain, as reasonable men have done with me since the dawn of time."

  "I know better. And you know that I do. It is I who have the power now. And I will use it."

  Brian could not understand his father talking in the formal cadences of the pulpit on this sunny Saturday morning. He shifted his position on the porch so he could see more clearly what was going on inside.

  The transformation in Mr. Riggio was staggering. Gone was the fat, smiling pizza man. In his place loomed a tall stranger with high, powerful shoulders. His arms hung down to his knees. At the end of his hands, where there should have been fingers, were cruel, curved talons. Unearthly fires burned in his eyes. The flesh of his face was splotched with angry crimson.

  Brian saw the sudden movement as the menacing stranger reached out toward his father.

  The Reverend Kettering's reaction was startlingly quick and catlike. He sidestepped and shot his right arm straight out at the other man. Clenched in his fist was ... something ... something all blurry in the sunlight that filtered in through the window. Kneeling outside, Brian cocked his head and squinted. The object seemed to be made of a polished red material and was about the size of a Coke bottle. Try as he might, Brian could not make out any details.

  Kettering took a step toward the larger man, and for a moment Brian feared one or the other would turn toward the window and see him. He ducked down again below the sill and crouched there, listening.

  "You fool!" The snarling voice of Mr. Riggio was like a whiplash. "You utter fool! Don't you know this is a fight you cannot win? Even if you banish me, sooner or later I will return in one guise or another. You will succeed only in destroying yourself."

  "Do
you, think I fear for my own life?"

  "If not, then what of your family? The woman, the boy. The little girl. And their children in years to come. They will suffer torments for your self-righteous wrath long after you are gone. This I promise you. Think about what you are doing, preacher."

  "Be damned!" thundered the Reverend Kettering in his most powerful pulpit voice. "In the name of the Christian God and all the honorable gods in all the religions of the world since time began, I consign you now and forever to the fires of Hell!"

  Brian longed to stand up and look, but the fury of the men inside was a palpable force keeping him down and out of sight.

  There was a long moment of charged silence, then his father spoke one more sentence. He spoke in a voice solemn as the tomb and in words of no language young Brian had ever heard. Strange-sounding, alien words that burned themselves forever into some dark recess of the boy's mind.

  The incantation was cut off abruptly. From inside the house Brian heard a shout, a strangled cry, and the thump of a body hitting the floor.

  The cry, unmistakably from the throat of his father, released Brian from his paralysis. He lurched upright and ran, stumbling, to the front door. After a moment fumbling with the latch, he flung open the door and rushed in.

  Pale ribbons of brown smoke floated in the room. To the boy's nostrils came a sharp scent of something burned. Something foul. His father lay facedown on the floor, his right hand still clutching ... something. The fingers clamped tight around it, tendons in his wrist straining even in death.

  No trace remained of Franco Riggio, the pizza man; only a scattering of pale ashes and an irregular scorched spot on the carpet.

  With some difficulty Brian rolled Harlan Kettering over onto his back. Even to the eyes of a six-year-old boy, the minister was unquestionably dead. The strong, gaunt face was unnaturally pale. While the expression was tranquil, there was a tightness around the mouth that showed the strain of his last moments of life. But it was the eyes that most clearly reflected death. They were open and empty, and they looked up at and through young Brian Kettering. As the boy watched, the eyes of his father slowly closed.

  He was back out on the porch, feeling dizzy, like the time at recess that his friend Billy Riddell showed him how to press a vein on the side of your neck and you'd pass out.