by Noel Hynd
He further wondered if the figure was that of Annette, and that he wasn’t seeing clearly. And that her head was lowered. Or was it an intruder?
Gradually his hand moved from his bed. It went to the base of the sofa and pushed underneath. His wet palm settled upon the handle of his pistol.
He drew the weapon. In the darkness, he could hear the steel of the gun withdrawing from the leather of the holster. Brooks rolled slowly off the sofa and onto the floor. He inched his way across the carpet.
What was casting that shadow? He moved on the floor for several feet, commando style, until he was almost in a position to see around the corner. Then he was around the corner. He was at a terrible angle from which to see. Similarly, it was a terrible vision that was before him. Whatever was there did seem to be the figure of an intruder.
But it made no sense. He had been right the first time. It had no head!
Tall and black and…
It had no head!
No, this was not another dream. Using both hands he cradled the pistol before him. Sweat poured from his brow. He gave considerable thought to firing a bullet to see what would happen. But his instincts of safety with a firearm were too professional. Shooting first was against everything he had ever learned.
Shooting first was how innocent people got killed.
He held the figure in his sight. Then he spoke.
“Who’s there?” he asked.
No answer.
“Talk to me. Don’t move! Talk to me.”
The figure seemed to shift slightly, almost as if it were floating not walking.
“Okay!” he said. “Last chance! Talk or I’ll shoot.”
The arms of the figure seemed to move. But the feet didn’t. For some reason, a thought about George Osaro crossed his consciousness, then flew away again.
His finger tightened on the trigger.
“Go ahead. Kill it,” something inside him said.
Still, some other impulse urged restraint.
Brooks wanted to see—wanted to know—before he pulled a trigger.
He quietly rolled to the wall near his front door. He kept his eyes on the figure in the darkness. Brooks rose to a knee. His sweaty left palm groped upward along the wall until it found a light switch.
He threw it on.
Light—bright lights from three hundred watts of track lighting—flooded the room. Brooks squinted and blinked. He stared at the spot at the end of the hallway that led to the kitchen.
Empty! Empty as a desert canyon.
There was no figure present. Just thin air and a vacant space. Still, he wasn’t reassured. He let his eyes adjust. He kept his gun trained before him. Then slowly he walked down the hallway to the kitchen.
The door was ajar. Not the way he remembered leaving it.
But he could have been mistaken.
He also could have been right.
An old enemy from my days in San Jose, he thought idly. Come to do business. Come to settle accounts.
He took several steps.
“Bull!” he thought to himself. I know I saw something!
He reached the kitchen door. He pushed it all the way open.
It clattered.
Nothing.
An empty kitchen. The door to the outside was locked from within.
Abruptly, Tim Brooks sensed something—a malevolent, scheming presence—behind him. He turned suddenly, the pistol out.
Nothing again.
He drew a long breath and let it out slowly. What was going on? Some mind-game of hide-and-seek? Cache-cache with a poltergeist? He searched every corner of the kitchen, the hallway and the living room.
“There is nothing here!” he told himself over and over. “Nothing!”
He went back to the light switch in the living room. He crouched down and turned off the track lighting. He allowed his eyes to adjust and looked to the same spot at the end of the hall, wondering if he would see the same figure in the darkness. He didn’t. It was gone.
Then again, several minutes had passed. The moon had shifted in the sky outside. Different shadows would be cast into the house by now.
He waited several minutes in the darkness. When nothing happened, when nothing moved, when no other shadow accosted him, he went back to the sofa.
Wearily, he settled down to sleep again. He put the pistol back in his holster.
A wonderful way to live, he thought to himself, sleeping with a gun under your body.
Then suddenly he was jolted.
“And a wonderful way to die!” cackled that irrepressibly petulant voice that came to him at will now.
Brooks’ heart raced. He recognized the voice. He knew it wasn’t part of his subconscious. It was coming from God-knew-where and he was hearing it God-knew-how.
After many seconds, Brooks answered it.
“Why don’t you make yourself known?” Timothy whispered aloud to the darkness.
Silence followed. Brooks concentrated.
Then, in a languid stretch of time, came the silky response. “When you choose to contact me I will do that,” the voice said.
“And how will I do that?” Brooks whispered again. “How will I contact you?”
The enemy: Elusive and coy. Taunting and mischievous. Satanic.
In a half-completed arc of sleep, Brooks listened again for an answer. None was forthcoming for several seconds.
Then, “How would you like a deep dark sleep?” the voice asked, not really in response. “A long sleep in a closed rosewood box, with your arms folded across your chest?”
“Shut up! You can’t kill me,” Brooks said aloud.
“You and the girl in the next room. I’ll kill both of you when the time is right.”
The voice almost had a texture now, rasping and shrill as it addressed the detective. Merry, devious and impishly clever.
“Maybe you’d like to be buried together,” it oozed. “Maybe in the same box. Arms and legs intertwined. Fetid flesh interlocking as your earthly remains rot…”
“Where in God’s name are you?” Brooks whispered. His voice was loud. His eyes searched the darkness. Sweat rolled from his forehead.
“Waiting,” the voice answered.
“Waiting where?”
“Nearby.”
“Waiting for what?”
“The right time.”
“The right time for what?”
“To kill,” the voice chirped. “To drag someone unwilling into the afterlife. To put someone else in a box in a cold earthen hole.”
“So there is an afterlife?”
“A hellish one for me. Maybe the same for you.”
“So you know all about death?” Brooks said.
“I’m an expert.”
“And you’ve killed before?”
“Oh, yes. Gleefully.”
Brooks’ next question was instinctive. “Did you kill the college girl?”
“Of course I did, my sweet fool.”
“Why?”
The voice laughed. “You’re the detective. You tell me.”
“And you decapitated the dummy?”
“My work, too.”
“Why?”
“Why not?”
“Have there been others?”
“Of course.”
“Who?”
“You’ll know soon enough.”
“Will you kill again?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“When I’m ready, dear Miss Brooks.”
“Who will you kill?”
“You’ll see very soon! I’ll arrange for you to make the discovery.”
“A man or a woman?”
“Both would be lovely.”
“If you already know, prove it. Tell me who.”
“A man. A friend of yours.”
Brooks thought about it.
“God! Not George!”
The voice laughed inside Brooks’ head.
“Osaro is already a dead man!” the voice proclaime
d, almost in song. “A dead man, a dead man. George is a dead man.”
“I don’t believe you.”
But the voice was mocking Tim savagely now. “If you love Georgie Porgie so much, why don’t you protect him, Timothy? Well, you know the answer: you can’t. You’re incompetent. As a cop… As a lover… As a man.”
“Go to hell!”
“Oh, I’ve been there! Foxy place of lost souls. But now I’m back!” There was a pause. “Oh, Timothy? There’s a beautiful woman in your bedroom. Why don’t you go in there and declare your love? You know you’d like to if you had the nerve.”
Brooks didn’t answer. He wondered what realm of reality he was traveling through.
“Might as well make a physical proposition to a famous actress, Timmy—Timmy Boy! You’ve accomplished nothing else in your underachieving life. Why not one more glorious failure?”
The voice exploded in mocking laughter again. But again, Brooks resisted the bait.
Go in there and offer her your shabby manhood, little boy. Don’t you think she’s enjoyed hundreds of others?”
“Will you be watching?”
“Of course.”
“Then you are nearby.”
“I said I was. I don’t lie. After death, there is no need to lie. All words are true.”
“Prove it.”
“Prove what?”
“That you’re nearby.”
“My pleasure, my dear Detective Swine! Observe!”
“Two sharp noises like a pair of shots exploded in the room a few feet away from where Brooks lay.
Dull bluish light flooded in.
Brooks bolted upward, as if electrified. Instinctively, one hand was under the sofa and came out again with his service revolver. He was on his feet and his other hand groped for the nearest lamp.
He threw on the light. The room was empty. He felt something like a pair of strong wings flapping in his chest and he knew it was fear.
Fear of the unknown.
Fear of another world parallel to this one, reaching out to take him in.
Fear of everything he had never dared to even imagine. Fear of things that were usually only murmured on the lips of nightmares.
Fear unlike anything he had ever known.
Pure cold fear.
The voice in his head was still, having established its point. The room, too, was still, with the exception of the dangling eye-cords of the two window shades which had suddenly shot skyward in the darkness, causing the noise in the room, causing Brooks to bolt upright, causing sweat to flood anew over his body.
The two cords swung very slightly, settling again. The detective stared at them. The only sound was that of his heart, which was thundering.
“You did that, didn’t you?” Brooks finally said aloud. “How? With a physical touch? With telepathy? Tell me how.”
But there was no answer.
Instead, Brooks again heard insane distant laughter...
Brooks watched the two shades. And it occurred to him that the spirit—or the demon, or the ghost, or whatever it was—had shot two shades skyward to prove his own existence. If one shade just had suddenly snapped and bolted upward, Brooks might have chalked it up to coincidence.
Two was beyond coincidence. Two proved that the spirit who owned the voice existed. It was as real as any other adversary he had ever known.
Brooks whispered aloud again, but now the displaced spirit was ignoring him. From somewhere, Brooks seized the notion that the demon was no longer present.
Brooks slowly went to the bedroom door. He quietly pushed it open. He saw Annette sleeping. He stood very still and could hear her breathing.
He closed the room again but left the door open a crack. Then he settled back onto the sofa, laying the gun beneath the pillow again. His stomach still churned. His eyes were so tired they stung.
Each time his eyelids closed, he battled to lift them. As time began to pass, he saw four A.M. come. Then four thirty.
“Oh, Brother Timothy?”
The voice had waited until Brooks was barely conscious, until sleep had d but wrapped its warm tentacles around him. Then it had returned.
“Timothy?”
“What?” Brooks said aloud to the lit room.
“I almost didn’t notice. You were born Catholic.”
“And what if I was?”
“Named for a Saint. Saint Timothy. Kudos.”
Brooks stifled another tremor. This voice, this spirit, this demon, whatever it was, was more than within his head. It was within his soul.
“A wise choice,” the voice said.
“What was?”
“Your name. A wise choice by your parents, may they burn forever in hell. Saint Timothy became St. Paul’s close friend and confidant. Timothy was with Paul when the Apostle was imprisoned at Caesarea and then Rome. He was executed, stoned to death when he opposed a pagan festival. As for me, I enjoy pagan festivals as they mark the demise of Christians.”
Tim raised his head. “What do you want from me?” Tim asked.
“Your tiny mind. But then, I already possess that, as you know.”
Brooks was silent.
“That was me before,” the voice continued. “That was me who touched your shoulder in the darkness. Remember…? When you were just approaching sleep… ?”
Brooks trembled this time. He thought of checking on Annette again, but he was too exhausted to lift his feet. He wondered if he had dreamed this final exchange or actually partaken in it.
He scanned the room. Empty. Silent. Creepy.
His enemy was nowhere, meaning it was everywhere. Tim Brooks now knew what it was like to be haunted. To be reached by something on the other side of one of those dark windows.
He thought of George Osaro and understood why the minister wanted no contact with an unknown of this sort. Yet he also knew, Brooks did, that he was locked in combat with this indecipherable force. How could there be any escape from it?
“Sweat dream, my impotent friend. And don’t forget. Your dear George Osaro is a dead man.”
The tone of the room change, almost like a sudden drop in barometric pressure. Brooks could tell that the presence had departed again.
Brooks exhaled a long breath. He left the lamp on.
Eventually he slept, albeit in a sitting position. When he awakened next, it was a gentler hand that nudged his shoulder.
This one was visible.
The hand was Annette’s. The clear light of another morning had blessedly arrived.
She sat down on the edge of the sofa. She looked relieved, rested and very beautiful.
“Stayed up most of the night, didn’t you?” she asked.
He nodded. Eyes bleary. Head pounding.
She shook her head in sympathy. “I knew you wouldn’t be comfortable out here,” she said. “I’m sorry. I can’t put you out again in your own home.”
“Annette, no. That’s not it. I… “
“I owe you breakfast. Anything in your refrigerator?” she asked.
He nodded. “You’d be surprised,” he croaked. “I’m strong on breakfast. “
She was amazed.
“Then I’ll make some,” she said.
She kissed him on the forehead, then stood. She turned her attention to the preparation of toast, juice and coffee. As she worked, Brooks moved to a living-room window and moodily stared out at the new day. A typical midsummer morning on the island, he thought to himself. The promise of sun and some humidity. In terms of police work, it would probably be as uneventful as any other. The occasional shoplifter. A car break-in. A stolen bicycle. Most people would be at their jobs, at the beaches, on their boats or playing tennis or golf. A typical day on a resort island. But for him, he brooded, a day unlike any previous one.
He now knew that whatever was haunting 17 Cort Street had the ability to follow both Annette and him. It could get into his head. Communicate its vile thoughts. Threaten. Cajole. Shoot window shades skyward. Butcher a dummy.
It was vicious. Malevolent. And it could kill. It already had.
Was there anything it couldn’t do?
And what was Brooks going to do about it?
“We’re ready,” Annette said from the kitchen.
They ate breakfast together.
When he left for work, he gave her a lift back into town.
Chapter Thirty-two
A crowd of reporters jammed the front entrance of the Nantucket police headquarters when Tim Brooks arrived for work. Brooks knew the reason for the commotion. That day there was to be an indictment in the murder of Mary Elizabeth DiMarco: Eddie Lloyd on a charge of second-degree murder. The two detectives who had worked on the case would be making full statements.
Brooks passed the reporters and recognized several from off-island. He passed the civilian receptionist and walked the corridor to his office.
He had not even seated himself at his desk when he saw that he had had a visitor. Another business card from Dr. Herbert Youmans, the island’s medical examiner emeritus. This time, in Youmans’ neat penmanship, a note had been written upon it:
“Timmy,” it said. “I’m fishing at Sankaty today, but we should talk, you and I. Important.” It was signed simply, “Herb.”
A moment passed. In the distance, Brooks could hear the gaggle of reporters being called to order. A slow stampede of anxious footsteps in a distant corridor indicated that the knights of the keyboards were being ushered to a conference room. There, Detectives Rodzienko and Gelman would make a statement and answer questions.
Brooks stared at the note and then an impulse was upon him. He walked to the police parking lot and signed out a vehicle with four-wheel drive. Seven minutes later, Brooks was on the Milestone Road driving in the direction of Siasconset on the southeastern end of the island. Twenty-five minutes later, he was winding his way along a lonely strip of beach directly below the crumbling lighthouse at Sankaty.
There he found exactly what he was looking for, a solitary fisherman casting a line into the ocean in bold sunlight. The man was standing not far from his own four-by-four Ford Explorer.
The figure, which had been very still, came to life when Brooks walked to him.
“Well, hello, Timmy,” the fisherman said affably.
“Hello, doc,” Brooks answered. He found himself staring into the ruddy pink face and doleful brown eyes of Herbert Youmans, M.D., seventy-one years old, local mystic and angler extraordinaire.
