The Reaper Within

by Stephanie Jackson

  He stood up and rolled the chair back over to the desk. “You’re just scared. It’s natural to be afraid of things you don’t understand. I think I have a couple of magazines in the car that will show you the process you’ll be going through. It’ll make you feel better to see them.”

  He walked across the room and disappeared up the stairs, leaving her alone in the room.

  ***

  The moment he was out of the room Mel jumped to her feet and hopped over to the original stone side of the room. She rubbed the duct tape that was holding her wrists together on a jagged stone until it started to tear, and then twisted her wrists, ripping the tape the rest of the way open and freed her hands.

  She bent and ripped the duct tape off from around her ankles, and then sprinted across the room to the desk. She grabbed what she needed and ran back across the room to the stairs. Her back was pressed against the stone wall at the base of the stairs.

  “Yes,” Abbott said making his way back down the stairs. “This magazine shows you illustrations of what you’ll be going through. I think it will make you feel better to see it. You’ll see that there’s nothing to be afraid…”

  When he stepped into the room, Mel jumped on him and jabbed a hypodermic needle full of Acepromazine Maleate directly into his jugular vein. She depressed the plunger and shot the drug directly into his blood stream. He tried to toss her off, but she held tight and waited for the drug to take effect.

  “This is what you did to your victims, Abbott. How do you like it?”

  He stopped trying to fight her and dropped to his knees to the stone floor. “You’re going to try to freeze me.”

  “No, I’m sending you to prison. I think Jack Roday would be pleased with that.”

  “Please take my paperwork to Vanderbilt so they can continue my work,” he said groggily. “It’s the only copy… that I have. Without it…all of the progress… I’ve made will… be lost… forever.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about that, Abbott. I promise I’ll take good care of your work.”

  “Thank you,” he said in a weak voice.

  “Oh, and Abbott, while you’re in prison you should check out some of the Mental Health programs they offer there. You’re as crazy as cat shit, and you may wanna get some help for that.”

  She grabbed the duct tape off the desk where he must have tossed it earlier and tied him up, and then filled up another needle and jacked him full of another shot of the sedative. He wouldn’t be waking up for a while and that was just the way she wanted it.

  She flipped the heating switch on the side of the bed/box. She raised the lid and kissed Jack’s lips one last time. It felt like ice against her skin. She rolled the victim files into a cone and stuck them in between the bed and the lid, leaving Jack room to breathe on the off chance that he did wake up.

  “Goodbye, Jack,” she said in a sad whisper. “And good luck. I had a good time with you, but like Abbott said, you’re not going to remember me. But I will always remember you.”

  She stood up, picked up the syringe and bottle she’d used, and stuffed them into her pocket. She ran upstairs and grabbed all groceries and supplies that she’d brought into the house and stuffed them back into the plastic bags they came in..

  She crammed the things she didn’t need in the small trash bag she’d been using. She ran upstairs to retrieve her broken laptop and overnight bag.

  She came back down the stairs, grabbed everything including the trash from the kitchen, and went to the front door. She sat the bags down on the floor and turned the doorknob.

  She put one foot outside the door to make sure she could leave, and then stepped out onto the porch. She was clear of the house. She reached back inside, grabbed the bags, and then closed door. For better or for worse, her job here was done.

  Chapter Ten

  She plugged her phone up to the car charger and just sat outside of the house for over an hour. It was still raining, but the worst of the storms had passed. She was waiting to see if the feeling from the house changed, like with the sudden appearance of a ghost, but it stayed calm and empty.

  She didn’t know if Jack was going to live or not, but she was sure that he hadn’t died yet. She finally picked up the phone and called Mrs. Mabry.

  “I have good news, really good news, and bad news,” she said when Angie answered the phone. “Which would you like to hear first?”

  “Let’s go with the good news first. God knows I could desperately use some.”

  “You house is now ghost free,” Mel informed her. “I crossed over ten souls.”

  “That’s $10,000.00. It’s not exactly the good news I was hoping for, Mel.”

  “Probably not, but it beats the hell out of the bad news.”

  Angie groaned. “What is it?”

  “Well, you have ten bodies in your basement.”

  “That not possible. That house doesn’t even have a basement.”

  “Yes it does. I found a secret entrance for it behind a fireplace. On the upside, you have more storages space than you originally thought. On the downside, bodies.”

  “You’re serious about this, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I surely am.

  “Ten bodies?”

  “Well, there are actually twelve bodies down there. Ten dead and frozen, one that’s kind of if-y, and Abbott Harlowe; the killer of them all.”

  “No, Abbott’s been dead for years.”

  “No,” Mel corrected her. “Abbott’s been missing for years, but he’s far from dead. He’s in that basement now, knocked out cold with the same weapon he’d used on all of his victims.”

  She explained to Angie everything she’d found out since entering the house.

  “Well, damn. This is not the ending I was hoping for. I’m gonna have to call the police now.”

  “I’ll call them, but I wanted to talk to you about it first. I take it that you don’t really want people to know what I was doing in that house.”

  “Oh, Lord no,” Angie gasped. “That’s all I need is more ghost stories to go along with a room of recently discovered bodies.”

  “And I don’t really want my name and occupation splashed across the headlines, so I propose that I make an anonymous call to the police. I’ll tell them where the bodies are and where they can find their killer.”

  “Won’t they ask you what you were doing there?”

  “I’ll just tell them that I was the next intended victim and that I got away and don’t want to be involved. Abbott will tell them all they need to know about the murders. God knows he can’t seem to shut up about it.”

  “Okay, what do you want me to do?” Angie asked.

  “Just act surprised when to police contact you. I’ll stick around Memphis until they clear the crime scene and turn the house over to you, and then I’ll show you the really good news.”

  “And what would that be?”

  Mel smiled. “You’ll see.”

  ***

  Mel made the call to the police from the payphone outside of Ma’s diner. The diner was still closed, so there was no chance that anyone saw here. She told the police about the bodies, the killer, and then hung up.

  She didn’t give them chance to question her. After hanging up, she stopped at a drive-thru for some breakfast, and then drove downtown and got a hotel room.

  She was sitting at the little table eating her breakfast sandwich when the phone rang.

  “Yes, Betty?” she answered.

  “Jesus, Mel, you couldn’t call?”

  “I didn’t need anything,” she said. “I’m done with that job.”

  “Have you turned on the T.V.? You’re ‘job’ is all over the news.”

  “No,” she said, turning on the television. “I didn’t tell them who I was, and Angie agreed that she wouldn’t either.”

  “They don’t have your name, but the house is on every channel. They’re not saying much about it yet.

  Just that there are ten people confirmed dead, and t
hat the suspected murderer was found on the scene. What the hell happened, Mel?”

  “I would have told you earlier, but my phone died,” she said and explained to Betty everything that had happened since she’d last talked to her.

  “Ho…ly, fuck! You were tied up in the basement by a serial killer?”

  “If it’s any consolation, Abbott wasn’t trying to be a killer, that’s why I didn’t sense it when I entered the house. He just had a jacked up idea about how to save people.”

  “It’s not a consolation, and you could have been killed!”

  “I could be killed at anytime; it’s just a part of life,” she said. “You said the news is saying there are ten confirmed dead. What about Jack?”

  “They haven’t said anything about him yet, but it’s only been a few hours. They haven’t released the names of any of the victims yet either. I’m sure they want to notify the families first. I don’t even think they’ve started bringing the bodies out.”

  “Yeah,” Mel agreed as she watched images of the house flash across the screen. “It’ll take them awhile to figure out how to go about that.”

  Cops were walking in and out of the house, and she could see a couple of Forensic vans in the background. She saw Angie standing in the yard talking to a detective.

  “So did you figure out how to save Jack?” Betty asked.

  “I figured out how to thaw him out, but I don’t know if it saved his life or not.”

  “Well, you did what the light asked; that’s all you can really do.”

  “The light didn’t give a damn about Jack, not as a person anyway. It couldn’t care less if he spends what’s left of his life in misery.”

  “But you do, don’t you? You care about him more than you want to admit.”

  “That’s not true,” Mel denied.

  “You had sex with him, Mel. That may not seem like much to a lot of people, but I know for you to have sex, it has to be by scheduled appointment. You slept with Jack on a whim. That means something.”

  “No, it doesn’t. It happened, and now life will go on as it always does. I’ll be home in a couple of days.”

  “A couple of days?” Betty asked. “Why aren’t you on your way home now?”

  “I need to talk to Angie again, and I can’t do that until the cops are done with the crime scene.”

  “Are you going to call the hospital and check on Jack?”

  “No, I’m not, and you’re not either, so don’t even think about it. There’s no point in it. Even if he survives unharmed, which is highly unlikely, the man has been asleep for twenty years. He’s not going to remember me, anyway.”

  “You can’t know that for sure.”

  “Yes, I can. I was informed of it by an expert in the field of Cryonics.”

  “Abbott Harlowe?” Betty asked. “You can’t believe anything that nutball says.”

  “He may be a nutball, but he’s a really smart nutball, Betty. He may be crazy, but in the end he did figure out how to freeze, and then revive, a human being. Insanity didn’t make him stupid, just dangerous.”

  “Maybe, but now the scientific community is going to have his research. I guess Cryonics is going to be back in full swing soon.”

  “No the hell it’s not,” Mel said. “I took his research with me, and you’ll be shredding it as soon as I get home.”

  “But why?”

  “Because, just because something can be done, doesn’t mean it should be done. I feel sorry for people when it’s time for their life to end, but life does end. It’s the natural order of things. No one is supposed to die before their time, but they’re not supposed to live beyond it either.”

  “Well, it’s up to you, I guess. I’m just the secretary, but it will be kind of fun shredding secret documents. I’m gonna pretend I’m an international spy. I’ll see you when you get home.”

  ***

  “You know, being here creeps me out more now than it did when the house was full of ghosts,” Angie said the next afternoon when they were standing on the porch.

  “It shouldn’t,” Mel said. “There’s nothing here that can hurt anyone now.”

  “Just the thought of all the bodies that were here kind of freaks me out.”

  “Well, they’re gone now, so there’s nothing to worry about.”

  “Did you hear that one of the victims was found alive? He must not have been frozen yet, I don’t guess.”

  “Is he okay?”

  Angie shrugged. “I don’t know, and they’re not saying. I haven’t even heard them mention it on the news. One of the detectives told me about it. I think they’re trying to keep it hush-hush for now.”

  “Maybe,” Mel said acting as if the information meant nothing to her. What it was actually doing was killing her inside. Not knowing if Jack was alright or not was like a physical pain. She pushed through it and opened the door. “Come on.”

  “What are we doing here, anyway?” Angie asked stepping into the house.

  “Just follow me.”

  Mel picked the fireplace poker up from beside the stairs where she’d left it, led Angie into the library, and over to the old fireplace. The police had left it open. They probably hadn’t figured out how to close it.

  Angie looked down the dark, stone stairway. “Is that where the bodies were kept?”

  “Yeah,” Mel nodded. “Haven’t you been down there yet?”

  “Hell no, and I don’t think I want to go down there now.”

  “Trust me, you do,”

  She said and pulled her phone out of her pocket to light the way down the stairs. Angie held onto Mel’s shoulder until she turned on the lights in the middle of the room. The room was empty now, but you could still see the circles on the concrete where the containers had sat for so many years.

  “Wow,” Angie whispered. “So this where Abbott stored the bodies?”

  Mel nodded. “Yep, this was his creepy little hidey hole.”

  “I still can’t believe Abbott was capable of doing what he did. He was always such a nice person.”

  “Yeah, listen to the neighbors of known murderers and you’ll hear the same thing. The fact of the matter is: we don’t know what another person is really capable of doing. We like to think that we do, but we really don’t.”

  “So what are we doing down here? I can’t believe there’s anything important enough to bring you back down here after what nearly happened to you.”

  “Something is always nearly happening to me. The important thing is that it didn’t happen. I lived through it, and I’m fine. This is just a room now, and you’d be better off if you starting thinking of it like that, too,” she said and looked around the now empty room. “This would be a good place for a small entertainment room.”

  “Maybe,” Angie said. “So what are we doing here?”

  “We’ve come for old Curtis’s gold.”

  “I told you I wasn’t looking for gold. Now that the ghosts are gone, I can get someone in here to fix this place up. I just want the Bed and Breakfast that I thought I was buying to begin with. Besides, this room is empty. There’s no gold here.”

  “Maybe,” Mel said. “But let’s make sure.”

  She walked back across the room to the wall that wasn’t quite right. She stuck the poker in between two of the stones and started prying them apart. One came loose, and she pulled it out from the wall. She removed two more of the stones and shined her phone’s flashlight inside.

  “Sweet mother of God,” Angie whispered from behind her. “Is that…”

  “Gold?” she finished for her. “It surely does look that way.”

  Angie started helping her pull the stones from the wall, and they revealed a small stack of gold bars and several large jars of gold coins. It was dusty, but it was gold.

  “How much do you think is there?”

  “All of it,” Mel said. “All $12 million that Curtis had hidden. The value of it now is quite a bit more, of course.”

  “Is it Abbott’s no
w?”

  “No, it’s yours,” she said and rattled of the Treasure Trove law that Jack had quoted to her.

  Angie arched her eyebrow. “Uh, that kind of makes it sound like the gold is yours.”

  “I don’t need any gold. To tell you the truth, all I want to do is get out of this house and never see it again.”

  “Are you sure? It just doesn’t feel right to keep all of it. I never would have found it on my own. Hell, I never would have even looked for it.”

  “It wasn’t my idea to look for it either. I just happened to be the one that found it.”

  “Please don’t tell me a ghost told you to look for the gold.”

  “No, it wasn’t a ghost. Jack…” she started to say, and then stopped when the lump started to rise in her throat. “It wasn’t a ghost. I’m leaving now. Do you want to walk out with me?”

  “No, thanks,” Angie said and started to pull the gold out of the wall. “This room suddenly isn’t that scary at all anymore. I think I’m gonna stay down here and play with the gold for awhile.”

  Mel laughed. “You do that. Betty will get in contact to tell you where to make the payment for services rendered. Have fun with your gold.”

  “Oh, I will.”

  Mel smile again and then turned and walked back up the stairs. She walked to the front door and left the house. She got into her car, turned to take one more look at the mansion, and then drove away.

  ***

  Mel took three days off. She didn’t tell anyone. She just turned off her phone, drove out of Memphis, and disappeared. She knew that Betty wouldn’t worry too much. She pulled off the interstate in Jackson, Tn. and got another hotel room.

  This was something Mel had done before when she needed some time to herself. As long as it didn’t go over a few days, Betty would understand. And it wasn’t as if Betty wouldn’t know where she was. Mel used her credit cards for everything when she traveled, and Betty had access to all her personal finances.

  If Betty really wanted to know where Mel was at, then she would just check her credit card use. Betty had pulled that stunt on many occasions when she thought Mel had been out of reach for too long. If Mel hadn’t used her credit card, then Betty would just use GPS to track her phone.