The Fringe Dwellers

by Patrick K. Ball

  “Okay,” Torrie said and paused to gather her thoughts. “Dr. Austin and Trish were involved in some sort of research to cure phobias through a radical method of hypnotic flooding.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And he told us that they developed a new method of hypnosis that was not only one hundred percent effective, but also basically instantaneous.”

  “I still don’t see where you’re going with this.”

  “Who’s to say that he only used this method of hypnosis on his patients? Let’s say you’ve been given this power to bend people’s minds, and then you’re confronted with a situation where you might lose your medical license, might even lose your freedom. Wouldn’t you use every tool at your disposal?”

  “Are you saying he hypnotized the panel on the medical board who were investigating his case?”

  “If everything he said was true, it’s possible, isn’t it?”

  “It’s a theory.”

  “But?”

  “But . . . I don’t know. Even if that was possible, and even if he was able to pull it off, we’re still missing something.”

  “Like?”

  “What about the bodies? What’s the connection?”

  CHAPTER 30

  “Courage is not the lack of fear. It is acting in spite of it.”

  —Mark Twain

  Torrie and Ed spent most of the remainder of the day driving around Edge Key looking for any signs of Uncle Kane. They even crossed the bridge to the mainland and drove around for awhile, but that was also fruitless. They finally gave up the search around nightfall and went back to Torrie’s house thinking that Uncle Kane might try to make contact with them there.

  “Ed, honey, why don’t we go to bed,” Torrie finally said after Ed dozed off on the couch for the up-teenth time.

  It was only eight thirty, but Ed had been awake since three sixteen in the morning. Plus, it’d been an emotionally exhausting day.

  “Huh?” Ed mumbled as he opened his eyes and got his bearings. “Oh, sorry. I must’ve dozed off again.”

  “So, let’s go to bed.”

  “But I want to be awake in case Uncle Kane tries to contact us. Or Undertaker.”

  “I know, but you’re acting like a child. If anyone calls or comes by, I’ll wake you up. I promise,” Torrie said as she playfully tousled his hair.

  “Tuck me in?” Ed said with a mischievous look.

  “Thought you were tired.”

  As it turned out, Ed was too tired. He was sound asleep before Torrie finished brushing her teeth. Torrie was tired too. It didn’t take her long to fall asleep either. The three of them—including Archie—slept soundly that night.

  Until three sixteen. “Noooo!” Ed screamed as he bolted upright in bed, waking up both Torrie and Archie in the process.

  “Another one?” Torrie asked as she sat up and put her arms around him. She was wide awake tonight.

  “Yeah, another nightmare,” Ed said in between breaths. “It’s three sixteen, isn’t it?” he said, although he already knew the answer.

  Torrie had already looked at the clock when he first woke up to confirm this. “Yes,” she said softly.

  “Let’s go,” Ed said. He still had his head in his hands and was breathing heavy.

  “Go? Go where?”

  “To find Uncle Kane . . . or whoever else was just killed.”

  “Are you crazy? It’s the middle of the night. We don’t even know where to begin looking, and what if . . . what if we find whatever’s . . . out there?”

  “I’ve been thinking about this, Torrie. I think there’s a reason I happened to come back to town after all these years, why I was drawn back here. I’ve got to face whatever it is that’s in the alley of my dreams that I’ve been escaping from for all these years. It’s time to bring an end to all these killings.”

  Or an end to our lives, Torrie thought.

  “Okay, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where should we go to find your monster?” Torrie said as they pulled out her driveway.

  Her sarcasm was due in part to her disagreement with Ed’s plan to go searching for the source of his latest nightmare. In her opinion, this was a job for the police, and she saw no potential upside in their quest. What would they do even if they found a body? What would it accomplish? Furthermore, what would they do if they ended up stumbling across Uncle Kane’s creature instead? They had no weapons of any kind, assuming that weapons would do any good anyway.

  The other reason for her sarcasm was simple—it was a defense mechanism to mask her pure, unadulterated fear. But Ed had told her he was going with or without her, so after a heated debate, she reluctantly got dressed and followed him on his foolish mission. It wasn’t just a Tammy Wynette stand-by-your-man mentality, she believed it would be safer for Ed to have company than to go alone. In addition, she also felt safer being with Ed than being left alone in her house with only a ten pound female dog with a man’s name for protection. Archie might be feisty and protective of her mommy, but the bottom line remained—she’s a tiny dog that’s unlikely to deter something that’s been hunting and killing humans for forty or so years.

  “Vagrant-ville,” Ed said as if the answer was obvious. “It hunts hobos. We go where the hobos are, we find its latest victim.”

  Ed’s short tempered response wasn’t due to any specific anger with Torrie. It was his defense mechanism to mask his pure, unadulterated fear. He didn’t want to do this any more than Torrie, but for reasons he was unable to articulate even to himself, Ed felt like this was the defining moment in his life—he needed to face his nightmare once and for all, damn the consequences.

  “Pull in next to that car,” Ed said when they got to Uncle Kane’s alley.

  “That’s kind of strange,” Torrie said as they were walking towards the alley. “Nobody parks their car overnight on Golddust in this area of town, unless they want to take a chance of it being broken into. I wonder what it’s doing here.”

  “I was just about to ask you the same thing. What are the two of you doing here?” Captain Nash said as he stepped out of the shadows of the alley.

  Torrie gasped as Ed said, “Good God!” and drew his arm to his chest. “You almost gave me a heart attack.”

  “Sorry,” Captain Nash said, “but I still want to know what you two are doing here.”

  Torrie looked to Ed for help. “Um, we, ah, have reason to believe that, um, someone else was killed tonight,” Ed said.

  “Would you mind telling me your source of information?” Captain Nash said.

  “Does it matter?” Torrie said.

  “Let’s see,” Captain Nash said, sounding agitated. “Less than twenty-four hours ago, you just happened upon a possible murder while searching for your uncle who just happened to be a resident of Ivory Rock where a similar death occurred, and now, you just happen to be looking for another person you claim to have been killed. I’m just the Captain of the fucking police department!” His face was now bright red and he was almost shouting at this point. “Why would it possibly fucking matter to me why you’re here in the middle of the fucking night!”

  “You wouldn’t believe me,” Ed said.

  “Try me,” Captain Nash said.

  “I had a dream,” Ed said.

  “You had a dream?” Captain Nash said. “You had a dream! Who are you, Martin Luther fucking King?”

  “I told you you wouldn’t believe me,” Ed said.

  “Okay, let’s go with this for a minute,” Captain Nash said. “You had a dream of . . . of what, someone getting killed?”

  “Not exactly,” Ed said.

  “Anyone in this dream die?”

  “No.”

  “Then why do you believe someone is dead?”

  “Look, I can sit here all night and try to explain it to you, but you’re probably not going to be convinced anyway, so why don’t you quit wasting time and come with us to possibly catch a murderer. Worst case scenario, I’m wrong and you get a good laugh at the nutcase who thinks
he’s dreaming of murders that haven’t been committed.”

  “Fine, lead the way . . . Mr. Dreamer.”

  “What were you doing in that alley in the middle of the night, Captain Nash?” Torrie asked as they walked towards the Vagrant-ville Community Center.

  “Police business,” Captain Nash flippantly answered.

  “That’s it?” Torrie responded. “You give us the third degree about being there, but you can dismiss the question with an unresponsive, ‘police business’?”

  “When you become a cop, then you get to ask the questions.”

  Captain Nash didn’t realize how loud he’d said the word “cop,” or how close they were to the Community Center until they heard the sound of people hurriedly crashing into the woods. The sound of “cop” acted as an alert siren to the people gathered around the campfire. As the Vagrant-ville residents made a dash for it, Captain Nash took off in hot pursuit followed closely by Ed. Torrie started to follow, but stepped into a hole and ended up face first into the dirt. Captain Nash and Ed followed what they thought was the main group of fugitives for a couple of minutes before Ed realized Torrie wasn’t behind them.

  “Captain! Where’s Torrie?” Ed said, suddenly horrified.

  “Hello, Torrie.”

  In the dim light, Torrie could only see the outline of the man who’d spoken.

  “W-Who’s there?” Torrie said.

  “Actually, I wanted to meet your boyfriend, but if I’ve got you, he’ll come looking for me eventually I suppose. You want to come with me, don’t you?”

  “Come, yesss.”

  “I’ll show you my special place, okay?”

  “Special, yesss.”

  CHAPTER 31

  “Get off my back about it!” Captain Nash said to Ed. They backtracked and searched the area where they’d last seen Torrie, but there were no signs of her, so Captain Nash forced Ed to follow him back to his car so he could radio for backup. “She was your girlfriend. I thought you were watching out for her.”

  Ed felt like he’d just been slapped. He wanted to punch this asshole-cop, at least cuss him out—it was a police officer’s duty to protect the innocent, not his—but instead, all Ed managed to do was throw up next to Captain Nash’s car.

  “Look, I’m sorry,” Captain Nash said after Ed was finished. “I didn’t mean what I said. I notified the County P.D. also. We’ll have twenty people out there searching for her within the next fifteen minutes. She couldn’t have gotten far. Don’t worry, we’ll find her. I promise.”

  Over the course of the next half hour as more officers arrived on the scene, Captain Nash organized a search party. The officers were paired off into two man teams as they arrived, and every square inch of the woods was to be searched. Captain Nash made his car into the central command post and kept in radio contact with all the search teams. Ed remained with him. As soon as all available officers were dispatched, Ed decided to get some answers.

  “I know you know something about these bodies . . . and whatever else is going on around here. I’ve found out more than you probably realize and it’s only a matter of time before I find out everything, but by then it might be too late for Torrie. Please, tell me what you know now. It might not be too late to save Torrie, but I need to know what you know. I care for Torrie more than I care for my own life. Please tell me. I’m begging you.”

  Captain Nash rubbed his temples before answering. He felt a migraine coming on. “I was just a rookie when I first heard a description of one of those bodies. I’ve seen several in person since, and I’ve read reports about more. I think you got copies of all the case files I’m talking about. They’ve all been deemed to be suicides, but I’m sure you already know that.

  “I had nothing to do with those old cases. Like I said, I was just a rookie when this whole thing began. We were told . . . ordered not to question what was going on.”

  “By whom?” Ed asked.

  “My old captain. You grew up here. I’m sure you remember good ole J.R. King.”

  “Yeah, I remember him. He was an institution on the Key.”

  “More like a god. You didn’t question anything he said, especially if you were a rookie cop straight out of the academy. J.R. told us not to question what was happening, so we didn’t. The only thing we were told to do was contact Dr. Austin whenever one of those bodies was discovered, but I don’t know why. J.R. said Austin would take care of it, that we shouldn’t be concerned . . . that it would stop on its own.”

  “But it never did.”

  “No, it didn’t. After awhile, I realized that I’d become a part of whatever conspiracy was taking place, but it was too late to do anything about it then. I was just as culpable as J.R. or Austin, so I just kept my mouth shut. I was also too scared of whatever was out there doing that to those people. It was simple self-preservation. I may be the captain now, but I still don’t know much more about what’s really going on than I did when I was a rookie.”

  “But Dr. Austin knows.”

  “I guess so.”

  “I don’t think they’re going to find Torrie out there. I’m going to Dr. Austin’s house.”

  “I’ll go with you. It’s time I paid for my sins.”

  Captain Nash left word with the search party that he was leaving the “command post” to pursue a promising lead into the presumed kidnapping of Dr. Torrie Wilson, but he didn’t bother to explain where he was going. Too many questions would need to be answered. Captain Nash and Ed would be on their own when they confronted Dr. Austin.

  “This is it,” Captain Nash said as they pulled into a long winding driveway that led up to one of the larger houses on Edge Key.

  Ed remembered this area of town from when he was a kid. This was where the rich folks lived. HBK’s mansion was within a couple of blocks of here, taking up an entire end of the island, and well protected by a fence that ran straight across the length of the Key. Ed rarely ventured over to this area of town as a kid. The people who lived in these houses seemed to be from a different world where all the kids went to private schools up north and all the adults strictly limited their social contacts to the members of the country club on the mainland. It was a closed society, old money only.

  Ed could barely make out Dr. Austin’s house from his vantage point, but it didn’t seem like anyone was home. Then again, it was close to five o’clock in the morning. If Dr. Austin was home, he would probably be sleeping.

  Captain Nash continued down the driveway, which looped around the front of the house forming a circle that led back to a point in the driveway midway between the house and main road. Ed now had a good view of the house. It was huge. The house was a Victorian style mansion more typical of an affluent area of Connecticut than Florida. Ed hadn’t been to Walt Disney World in years, but for a reason that may or may not have been accurate, he thought the house was a dead ringer for the house of the Haunted Mansion attraction.

  Captain Nash knocked on the door and rang the doorbell for more than five minutes before Ed said something. “I don’t think anyone’s home.”

  “Stay here, I’ll be right back,” Captain Nash said as he started walking around towards the back of the house. A couple of minutes later, he returned around the other side. “I couldn’t see anything inside, but maybe he’ll answer his phone,” Captain Nash said as he pulled out a cell phone and pushed a couple of buttons. Apparently, Dr. Austin was on his speed dial. “No answer,” he said after a dozen rings. “Any suggestions?”

  “How about his partner in crime?”

  “Trish?” Ed nodded. “I guess it’s worth a shot.”

  Trish’s house wasn’t far away from Torrie’s house, which only served to remind Ed that this could turn into the worst day of his life. Somebody was dead, he was sure of that. Uncle Kane had been missing for a full day, and he could easily be the reason for Ed’s latest nightmare. And to top it off, Torrie was now missing. It solidified the fact that Ed was madly in love with her. He didn’t know what he would do if som
ething happened to her, especially since he was responsible for placing her in harm’s way in the first place.

  Captain Nash began to perform the same routine as he had at Dr. Austin’s house, initially with the same results—no answer to repeated knocking and doorbell ringing. Then, he disappeared around the back of the house only to return a couple of minutes later from the other side.

  “We’ve got a problem,” Captain Nash announced when he returned.

  “W-What is it?” Ed said, scared to death that he’d found Torrie dead.

  But it wasn’t Torrie who was dead. “Trish is lying on the floor in the middle of her living room.”

  “Dead?”

  “Yeah. Same condition as the others. I’m putting an A.P.B. out on Austin. Don’t worry, Ed, we’ll find her before he can strike again.”

  They’d found the source of Ed’s latest nightmare. Ed hoped it would be the last.

  CHAPTER 32

  You don't face your fears, you stand up to them.

  —Unknown

  It wasn’t his creature that had startled Kane after he ran away from Hulk’s dead body. It was only Spike, but it scared the shit out of Kane when Spike said hello to him. Kane spent the rest of that night around as many people as he could convince to stay awake. It cost him the promise of another bottle from his stash, but Kane figured that the booze wouldn’t do him any good anyway if his creature caught up to him alone.

  By the time dawn rolled around, Kane had made up his mind to get as far away from Edge Key as he could get, never to return. He would call Eddie in a few days and explain why he left. Kane and another drifter everyone called, “Snow,” probably because of the contrast between his white hair and dark skin, were halfway to the county line before Ivory Rock even noticed Kane was missing. Snow agreed to come on the promise of an adventure. He would never go in search of adventure again.

  “I got to go back,” Kane said.

  “You crazy?” Snow said. “They probably lookin’ fo’ you by now.”