The Ashes (The Rebecca Underhill Trilogy Book 2)

by Vincent Zandri

  “You know what I think, Boo?” I say. “I think that Skinner lives right here in your very giant imagination.”

  “That’s what Dr. Cuther thinks,” he says. Pursing his lips. “But he doesn’t know.”

  “What doesn’t he know?”

  “He doesn’t know that Mr. Skinner is real. That I’ve seen him. That Molly has seen him. That he sings to us. Ring around the Rosie.”

  My pulse starts to pound, and the adrenalin that pours into my brain makes my temples throb. Part of me wants to scream at the top of my lungs, “There is no Skinner, goddamnit!!!” But then, another part of me is simply frightened. Because, for the longest time, I believed there was no more Joseph William Whalen, until one day he reappeared and abducted me.

  “I’ll make a deal with you, Boo,” I say. “If you try and forget about The Skinner, I’ll take you to see the new Batman versus Superman movie at the mall next weekend.”

  His eyes light up.

  “Like, for realz?”

  “For realz.”

  Leaning into the boy, I plant a kiss on his cheek. I stand, go around the bed to the bedroom door. I turn off the overhead, go to close the door half way.

  “Mom,” Mike says, just as I’m beginning to think I’m in the clear.

  Poking my head back inside.

  “Yes, Boo.”

  “Can you open the window just a little? I’m hot.”

  I remember what Super-Duper-Trooper Dan used to say. “Always crack the window open even on the coldest of nights. Carbon monoxide is the silent killer, after all.” Heading back into the room, I go to the old double-hung window at the far end of the bedroom, place fingers from both hands under the latches, push up. I feel the immediate rush of cool air, listen to the quiet howl the wind makes when it blows through the narrow opening created by the window pane and wood frame. My eyes stare out onto the moonlit cornfield and the dark forest behind it, and my stomach goes south.

  He’s out there, a voice whispers inside my head. A voice that belongs to neither my twin sister nor to my ex-husband. Skinner is out there, and he’s real. If little Mike’s bedroom weren’t on the second floor, I might not allow the window to be open even a crack. I might insist he sleep with me. But for now, I have to believe he’s in a good place. A safe place.

  I turn, go back to the door.

  “Goodnight, Boo,” I say.

  “Night, Mom,” he says. Then, shifting his head so that his eyes are focused on the far corner of the bedroom. “Night, Dad.”

  “Michael,” I say inside my head. “Are you there, protecting our little boy?”

  I take a moment to listen for an answer that never comes, and then I walk out of the bedroom, leaving the door wide open.

  She sensed his presence.

  His little kitten had to know he was there standing in the corner of the barn the entire time. She saw his eyes. His glistening black eyes. But the darkness can be a real friend, and if living under the cornfield has taught him one thing, it’s how to silently bolt from one place to another without anyone or anything else standing within twenty feet having even the slightest clue. It’s all a part of his brilliance. Like his sense of smell. Like his strength. His heightened senses. The gift unknowingly bestowed upon him by an abusive father.

  Now, he stands outside the house. He is not naked like he is when he hunts for his supper. He is dressed in black long underwear and long-sleeved T-shirt. His feet are covered in black, Five-fingers minimalist shoes. He’s cut his fingernails down to more manageable pointy tips, and his face is covered in black face camo and a black high altitude training mask with the air filters removed, providing him with unobstructed oxygen while filtering out both nitrogen and noise. Wrapped around his waist, a black nylon belt that secures only one tool. A half-moon shaped flaying knife.

  He climbs.

  Like a human spider, he is able to scale his way up the metal downspout, to the porch overhang. From there, he crawls up on the angled roof all the way to the peak. Then, extending his feet over the side, he quietly positions them onto the window stool. Using his toes like the fingers on his hand, he pulls the window open. Lowering his entire body, he slips in through the window, and onto the bedroom floor.

  Just as The Skinner suspected. The little boy is asleep in his bed, his gentle snores giving him away. Skinner approaches the bed, moving slowly, his body crouched, hands held out before him like the sharp claws on a wolf about to pounce on its prey.

  Then, dropping down to his belly, he slithers along the floor until he comes to the bedroom beside the boy’s. Keeping the entirety of his body hidden behind the exterior bedroom wall, he peeks into the room and sees that the light from the single lamp set on the bedside table barely illuminates the humble bedroom. But it’s enough for him to see Robyn, as she removes her overalls, kicking them off, then her T-shirt and her bra, leaving only her black boy-short panties.

  When she heads into the attached bathroom, Skinner makes his move. Slithering like a snake, he enters the bedroom, rolls onto his back, and quickly slips under the bed. His hands pressed flat up against the mattress, his eyes wide open, he listens for the sound of the toilet flushing. Then he listens for footsteps exiting the bathroom and crossing the bedroom floor. The bedroom door closes, and Robyn slips into bed.

  Only when the bed lamp is extinguished does a smile grow on his tight face. A smile that exposes sharp teeth. Soon he’s going to eat again. And soon he will have yet another new face.

  The Skinner has found its prey.

  I sit down at the kitchen harvest table, open the laptop. Bringing up the Google search engine, I type in the name Skinner. It doesn’t give me much. An auction and estate sale site, a website for a bar called “Skinners,” a blog spot by some high school kid.

  One site that catches my eye is a Wikipedia entry for the now late world famous psychologist BF Skinner. Glancing at the copy posted, I’m carried back to my college undergrad years and some of the psychology courses I took. One of which featured BF Skinner. Glancing at the article, I recall his premise that free will does not exist. That, instead, behavior is a learned trait based on past experience. In other words, if what you do pleases you, chances are, you’ll do it again.

  “Like murder,” I whisper. “If you kill and you love it, you’ll keep on doing it again and again.”

  I move on, keeping an eye out for something or someone called Skinner that’s different from the rest. Something that might even be remotely related to the man my son and little Molly claim to have seen hanging around the cornfield. But nothing is coming up. Which could be a good thing. Maybe nothing means my original hunch — that all this excitement is nonsense to begin with — is proving true. Maybe I should crack one last beer, steal another one of Robyn’s cigarettes, smoke the crap out of it, then go to bed, get a good night sleep, put this day behind me. The bad parts of it, anyway.

  But another big part of me tells me to dig deeper. To improve my search. If there’s one thing that bothers me about The Skinner situation, it’s the children telling me he wanted them to go into the woods to find a house. The Whalen house. How would the children know about that house unless they know about the man who abducted me . . . not once but twice? Or, if there is a Skinner, how would he know? There must be a connection between the two.

  Typing in the keywords, “Joseph William Whalen, Skinner” I press Enter and wait for the results. The results are immediate and nearly knock me sideways. Because there, in the first item, is not only an article about a man who is known in law enforcement circles as “The Skinner,” there is also a photo of the man’s face.

  The face is hairless. Meaning, no hair on the scalp, or on the face, or on the brows. His mouth is wide, but his lips thin. His teeth are not like normal teeth at all but, instead, chiseled fangs. His eyes are dark with the surrounding whites barely visible, as if he discovered a process for artificially darkening them. In the photo, he’s wrapped tightly in a strait jacket.

  The title of the pub
lication is The Times Herald Record, and the article headline is “Skinner and Joseph William Whalen Dangerous Cell Mates.” I scan the article to learn that The Skinner, whose real name is Lawrence Fredrick Hanover originally of rural Berlin, New York (one county east of Rensselaer), was doing several life sentences in Green Haven for having skinned seven teenagers alive and then performing cannibalistic acts on their remains. He had resided with Whalen inside a cell in the maximum-security prison for several years prior to Whalen’s parole. During that time, the two had purportedly become so close, they married.

  That said, it was only after Whalen’s absence that Skinner became so distraught he cornered a corrections officer outside the mess hall, sliced off his face with a home-made flaying knife, and then proceeded to feed on the exposed raw flesh. Authorities had no choice but to incarcerate the psychotic killer in a separate facility specially designed for dealing with violent psychosis. In this case, the Mid-Hudson Psychiatric Center in New Hampton, New York.

  The murderer resided there for the past eight years before he escaped while being transported to another psychiatric facility upstate. His whereabouts are unknown, but some speculate that he made it across the Canadian border during the winter months of 2014/15 when the lakes in the Western New York region were frozen and the border entirely porous. If that’s the case, the paper reports, it’s possible he changed his identity both physically and on record and made it to Europe or even Mexico, where he could blend in and get lost.

  “Or, he could be living in my cornfield,” I whisper, my mouth suddenly dry, my belly tight and sore.

  The doctor in charge of Skinner — a man listed as Dr. Martin Friedlander — is quoted as saying whoever comes into contact with the killer must stay as far away from him as possible and to immediately alert the authorities.

  “Gee, no shit, Doc. But how I would love to grab up ten minutes of your time to know precisely what it is I am dealing with. If I am dealing with anything at all, that is.”

  I sit back in my chair. Raising my hands, I realize they’re shaking. Pulling out the chair, I go to the counter, locate Robyn’s cigarettes and light one up. I also fetch another beer from the fridge. My third. I don’t think I’ve had three beers in a row since college. I wonder how easy it would be to score some pot.

  Pulling the cell phone from my jeans pocket, I thumb a text to Sam. You up?

  I smoke, drink, try not to look out the glass in the back door onto the cornfield. But I can’t help it. How is it possible that someone could live inside a cornfield?

  The phone chimes. Obviously, Sam is up, or I woke him up.

  Yup, he texts. All okay?

  I text, A man called Skinner exists. He’s a murderer. More than a murderer. A cannibal. He escaped from a psychiatric prison, and now I’m afraid.

  A beat drags by. Then, I’m coming over.

  I’m not about to refuse the offer of security, especially when it comes from Sam. Maybe I should think more about little Mike’s feelings, but not when I have proof that the Boogeyman does, indeed, exist.

  Okay. See you soon.

  Coming from out in the dark corridor, the creaking of the floorboards. Footsteps. Heart pounds in my throat. I grow dizzy with fear. Out of balance. I toss the cigarette into the sink, put down the beer, pull the French knife from the wood block knife holder set on the counter.

  The knife gripped in my hand, I begin to slowly make my way across the kitchen floor. The closer I come to the dark corridor directly outside the door-sized opening, the louder the footsteps become.

  “Who’s there?” I say, the words peeling themselves from the back of my throat. “Who . . . is . . . there?”

  I make out an exhale, and a grunt. And then, whoever is there, comes charging at me.

  “For God’s sakes Michael Junior,” I bark, “what the hell are you doing out of bed, young man?”

  His big eyes grow even wider, and he begins to cry. I realize I’m still holding the knife in my hand, I’m swaying from drinking far too much today, and I imagine that I must be quite the frightening sight for the child to behold. I push his face into my belly, gently, while extending my arm and dropping the knife onto the table. My belly is tight, but the adrenalin mixing with the alcohol in my blood has dulled the pain. For now.

  After a time, Mike pulls away, looks up at me.

  “Your heart is beating so fast, Mom,” he says. “It sounds like a drum.”

  “You startled me,” I say. “So what are you doing up?”

  “I was cold,” he says. “The window is open too much.”

  My eyes squint and my brow furrows. “I only cracked it open.”

  “Well, the cold wind was blowing on me. It woke me up. And nothing ever wakes me up. ‘Less I’m having a bad dream. You know, like I’m lost inside the corn and can’t get out.”

  “Since when have you been having dreams like that, Boo?”

  “Oopsies,” he says, “I didn’t mean to tell you. You’re already like so worried about me. Worried about the ghosts. About Mr. Skinner.”

  I set my hands on his shoulders.

  “Hey, Boo,” I say, “you know you can always come to me with anything and everything. You know that, right? If you can’t talk to your mom, who can you talk to?”

  He smiles warmly.

  I add, “Now, how about a drink of milk and then I’ll put you back into a warm bed?”

  “Can you warm the milk up in the microwave?”

  I picture what it must have been like one hundred years ago. A mother warming up the milk for her little boy on a wood-fired, cast-iron stove. Fifty years after that, a mom warming up the milk on brand new GE electric stove. Now, I’m warming up a little boy’s milk in a microwave. Times change. The needs of cold, frightened little boy don't.

  “Coming right up,” I say.

  I go to the refrigerator, grab the milk, pour some into a coffee mug, slip it into the microwave, press the thirty-second-quick-heat option. The microwave turns on, lights up, the round glass dish set onto the bottom of the unit spins, the motor hums. Out the corner of the eye, I see Mike glancing at my computer and the photo depicted inside the digital newspaper article. I see his face turn a distinct shade of pale, his normally round cheeks go tight.

  The microwave turns off with a beep, beep, beep.

  “That’s him,” my little boy says. “That’s the man in the cornfield. That’s Mr. Skinner.”

  Heart stuffed right back inside my throat like it never left there in the first place, I retrieve the milk from the microwave, rip off a paper towel from the cabinet-mounted dispenser, and wrap it around the mug handle.

  “Here you go, Boo,” I say a little too loudly. But I’m trying to pull his eyes away from the visual on the computer.

  He turns quick. His face lights up again at the sight of the warm milk. He comes to me. I hand him the milk, tell him to drink it slowly. It could still be hot.

  “You sure that’s the man in the cornfield?” I ask as I go to the kitchen table, close the laptop lid.

  “Yes,” he says, coming up for air, a white milk mustache painting his upper lip. “Maybe.”

  In my head, I’m praying he didn’t read any of the newspaper copy. Copy that included Lawrence Fredrick Hanover’s infamous nickname. Skinner or The Skinner.

  “Which is it, Boo?”

  “Every time Molly and me talk to Mr. Skinner, it’s when he’s inside the corn. It’s hard to see all of his face. But we see him all right, and that man in the picture looks like him.” He forms a confused grin like he’s not sure if he should be happy or sad at recognizing the man in the picture. “So, I guess maybe that man in the computer is the man we talk to who invites us into the corn to play with him. The man who wanted us to go into the woods to find the secret house and to find you and Aunt Robyn waiting for us there.”

  He drinks more milk. I try to breathe without passing out.

  Christ, every time I try to convince myself Skinner doesn’t exist, more and more proof that he�
��s real flesh and blood reveals itself. Tomorrow . . . tomorrow I’ll go to that psychiatric hospital and speak to that doctor. What’s his name? Friedlander. He will tell me exactly where The Skinner is. Maybe.

  Michael Jr. sets the empty cup into the sink like a good boy.

  “Let’s go back up, Boo,” I say.

  “Okay, Mom,” he agrees, following up with a long yawn.

  He takes my hand at the very same moment something bangs against the kitchen door.

  I turn quick, my hand squeezing Mike’s hand so hard I hear him wince. I see the face inside the glass. It’s Sam. In all the confusion, I’d forgotten all about having texted him. About his telling me he was coming over right away. Good old Sam.

  “Hang on a sec, Boo,” I say, releasing his hand.

  I go to the door, unlock it, let Sam in. His face beams with a smile upon seeing that my son is up.

  “Well, what are you doing out of bed, little man?”

  “Mom left my window open,” he says.

  Sam goes to him, picks him up, looks into his milk-stained face.

  “Now, I’m quite sure that if mom opened your window, it was for very good reasons.”

  “Yes,” I say. “The little guy asked me too.”

  Sam is wearing a jean jacket over the work-shirt he was wearing earlier. It’s old and worn with holes in the elbows. He tickles Mike Jr. and the boy responds by trying to squirm his way out of Sam’s hold.

  “Let me out,” Mike cries in between bursts of laughter.

  “I betcha Superman and Batman would be able to bust out of my arms, no sweat.”

  “I’m . . . not . . . Superman!” Mike laughs.

  Sam sets him down.

  “I’m going to take him back up, Sam,” I say. “You wait down here for me.”

  “Yes ma’am,” he says. “Mind if I help myself to a beer?”

  “You have to ask?” But the way I’ve been putting them away today, I’m wondering if there are any left.

  Once more I take hold of Mike’s hand, begin leading him out of the kitchen. Out the corner of my eye, I see Sam go to the refrigerator, open the door. When he bends over, I make out the indent his pistol grip makes against his jean jacket.