by Noel Hynd
The darkest moments of Brooks’ life and the ghost could summon them in an instant! The worst parts of being a policeman. Notifying the relatives of the dead, if they had any. Hoping, when you found a body like that, that they didn’t have any relatives.
“Buried together,” the voice taunted again. “That’s how the two of you will stink.”
As quickly as it had materialized, the revolting stench was gone.
“Do I have your attention again?” the voice asked.
Brooks fingered the beer bottle. He feigned confidence, although the spirit had again slashed right through to his most private fears and frailties.
With horror, he began to realize: sometimes his adversary could read his mind.
Brooks lifted his gaze. He looked back to the night beyond his window. He wasn’t absolutely certain, but he thought the dark figure had drifted closer. Now it was about twenty feet beyond his window. Close enough, he assumed, to pass through a wall if it wished to.
Pass through the walls of his home and confront him. He felt like standing up and screaming. Then running. Dear God! At what point did he come to accept that something like this could really happen?
“You must give me your attention,” it insisted, angry this time.
Brooks maintained his ground. He sat at his table. His moist fingers toyed with the lip of the beer bottle.
“I don’t have to do anything,” Brooks answered.
“No?” It mocked him.
Now Brooks was certain. It had drifted closer.
“I have a new weapon,” Brooks said.
“A weapon for what?”
“To use against you,” Brooks said.
“And what would that be, dearest swine?”
“Free will. Thought transference. My mind against what remains of yours. Willpower. Faith.”
Laughter. Then, “No match there! Whatever are you talking about, my most feeble friend?”
“My clergyman advised me,” Brooks whispered.
The same old perceived threat followed. “George Osaro is a dead man. Don’t you understand that?”
“Willpower,” Brooks repeated. “Faith. My intellect against yours. I would compare my weapons to the action of a magnet in deflecting a compass needle,” Brooks said.
“I’m going kill the lady in your bed. Make violent love to her then kill her.”
“You will stay out there in the night and in the darkness,” Brooks said. “I do not will you within my home tonight.”
The policeman’s hands were soaked with sweat. More sweat rolled down his ribs from his armpits. How, he wondered, was he able to just sit there with this thing… this creature… this odious, vicious presence moving closer and…?
“Your will has little to do with it,” the deranged spirit claimed.
“It has quite a lot to do with it,” Brooks answered. “I’ve learned this much. You, or any spiritual evil, can only exist when some small part of my mind allows you to exist.”
“But you know I exist!” the voice croaked with glee. “You can no longer ever deny my existence. Therefore…!”
“But I do not allow you within my home tonight”
“I will enter anyway.”
“I do not allow you within my home tonight,” Brooks repeated. His voice was firm, clear and calm. He turned and watched. But already the form showed signs of dissipating in the darkness.
“Fool!” it raged.
Brooks looked away from it.
“Fool!” It screamed again. “I am leaving of my free will. And you and I will not be finished until the earth has received you.”
But the specter receded as Brooks glanced back to it.
“Fool! Fool! Fool! I will be doubly avenged.”
The shadow withdrew into the night until it was gone. For a moment, Brooks waited, wondering if his calculation was wrong and that the spirit would materialize beside him. Or jolt to life behind him. Or flash into view in the hallway when he turned the corner.
Or be lurking in a closet in the dark bedroom when he returned to it. Lurking, and waiting until he was comfortably in bed. But there was no sign of it.
No Henry Flaherty.
Just as when he could now sense when it was present, he could now sense when he was safe.
A final time for good measure, Brooks spoke aloud. “Not within my home tonight.”
He exhaled long and deeply. He looked away from the window. He finished his beer. He put the bottle in the sink, turned and left the kitchen, flipping the light off when he passed.
He walked through the unlit living room and through the door to the bedroom. He slid into bed. In the silence, in the darkness. He looked around the room.
Nothing.
“Timmy?” Annette asked sleepily.
“Hmmm?”
She moved to him. She held him. “Where did you go?” she asked.
“Just for something to drink,” he answered.
She sleepily pressed her breasts to him and snuggled close.
Her body was warm, as was his against her.
“I was having a bad dream,” she said. “It was horrible.”
There was a small lamp by the bed. He turned it on. A twenty-five-watt bulb threw light across the room.
“There’s nothing to be scared of,” he said. “Not tonight.”
She sat up, squinting, her back against the pillow. She sighed in relief.
“A bad dream about the two of us?” he asked.
“Yes. How did you know?”
“Ignore it,” he advised. “Don’t let it control your mind. Let your mind control it.”
“But I kept hearing this horrible phrase. About the earth receiving us. Together. Buried together.” She shuddered. “I don’t want to be dead, Tim. I want to live happily for a long time. And if it’s with you, if that’s what God or fate intended…”
“Then that’s what will happen,” he said.
It was the type of promise one instinctively makes in the middle of the night. He leaned to her and kissed her on the forehead. Then on the lips.
“Know something?” she asked. “Right now I don’t even want to go do my next film project. The one for cable television. I want to stay with you.”
“I’m flattered.” He kissed her again.
“Maybe you can come to Europe with me. Or California.”
It was a silly time of the morning, a time for the ideas borne of passion to prevail over common sense.
“That would be nice,” he said, agreeing without agreeing.
“Real nice,” she said, sleepily snuggling in against him. “It would make me happier than anything I could imagine right now.”
He turned off the light. Their bodies found each other again.
He took her tightly in his arms and kissed her with a passion that neither of them had known for years. And they made love for the second time that evening.
Chapter Forty-nine
Andrea Ward appeared as a shadow might, silently and late the next afternoon. She stood at the door to Detective Brooks’ office and knocked twice.
Brooks raised his eyes.
“Hello, Andrea,” he said flatly. “What took you so long?”
“What a greeting! Aren’t you glad to see me?”
“Not when you’re carrying a pad and pencil.” He smiled when he said it. She smiled back and kept the pad and pencil handy.
“What’s a woman to do when she’s so unwelcome?” she asked.
“She probably walks in, sits down, makes herself at home and starts asking questions,” Brooks answered.
Andrea walked in, sat down and made herself at home. She turned to a fresh page on her notepad and laid it across her lap. “So?” she asked.
“So what, Andrea?”
“I’ve got the story of the year, Tim,” she said. “And I want you to confirm it for me.”
He grimaced. “I might not be able to. And I know the way you work sometimes, Andrea: never let the facts get in the way of an entertaining story.”
“Hush,” she said. “Or I’ll never let you see me naked again. Listen, what a story I have. Love, death. Murder. Mystery. The occult. Am I getting warm?”
He ran a hand over his eyes. He folded his arms.
“What’s your lousy story?” he asked.
“A young man named Eddie Lloyd is arrested for murder on Nantucket. But after he’s charged, and while he is off the island, a similar murder occurs. Maybe two, if you count the hick Canadian kid down at Surfside. No real suspects. So the local police department—and this includes you, I believe, Tim—turn to the occult to try to find a solution. Or, and I may be stretching it here, sane heads within the police department actually suspect that there may be a supernatural aspect to the murders. What do you say, Tim? Am I close?”
“Is that your whole story? Where’s the love?”
She grinned. “I’ll get to that presently.”
“Get to it now while I’m still awake...”
Her eyes fastened upon his.
“Well, this is more of a social note than a crime report. But here’s where we sex it up,” she intoned. “Are you denying that you’ve spent a night or two with a very famous lady from the West Coast?”
“Oh, come on, Andrea. Give me a break.”
“That part’s true, too, isn’t it?”
He thought for a moment. “You’re shameless, aren’t you?”
“I try to be. I try very hard to have no shame and not a shred of decency. How am I doing?”
“Pretty well. What you’re asking about is my own personal business. You can write what you want, but I’m not talking to you about what I do on my own time.”
“Here’s the deal. I’ll keep that part out of the paper, if you’ll give me a confirmation on the first part.”
“Sounds like you’ve got most of a confirmed story, anyway,” he said. “Who did you talk to?”
“Everybody in sight, Tim. Doctor Youmans. Lieutenant Agannis. The medical technicians who carted out Emmet Hughes’ body. The Delphic Oracle. One of the state cops who was standing around listening to you.” She smiled. “Even got a few vague words out of the island’s crackpot spiritualist guru, Reverend Osaro.”
“Okay. So what?” Brooks asked.
“So what’s going on, Tim? Are you running a homicide investigation or acting out plots for ‘The All New X Files’?”
“What are you implying?”
“Tell me, how did you ever get so good at answering questions with questions?”
“Why do you ask me that?”
“Are you planning a séance, Tim? In connection with this case?”
“Who told you that?”
“I’ve heard you are. Are you?”
“Do I look like a séance type?”
“I have my ways of finding out, Tim.” She paused, triumphant. “And you just confirmed almost all of my story for me.”
He leaned back in his chair and shrugged. “Print what you want. But I didn’t confirm anything.”
“Come on, Timmy, handsome. Toss me a little something good for old time’s sake.”
He sighed. “Andrea,” he said. “We have no ‘old times.’ Try to act with some responsibility. You print a story like this, involving a murder case, maybe two murder cases, a clergyman and a séance, and this island is going to have every reporter in North America, print, electronic, and internet on it. The place will be a zoo.”
She smiled sweetly. “All the more people to buy the High-Anus Eagle as they’re passing through the area. Which is very cool for me, you know.”
Brooks gazed at Andrea for several seconds, considering her and her inevitable involvement in the case. He weighed some options and moved quickly to a decision.
“Close the door,” he said.
“Why? You going to shoot me or seduce me?”
“Close it and you’ll find out.”
She hesitated.
“Don’t close it and you’ll never find out,” he teased. “No loss to me.”
“All right,” Andrea said. She rose, leaned on the door and pushed it. Brooks waited till it clattered shut.
“You don’t write anything till I tell you that it’s okay,” he said. “That’s the deal. Break that agreement and you’ll never see any cooperation out of this office again.”
She raised her hand like a girl scout, two fingers up, thumb folded. “On my honor as a pushy trashy broad,” she said.
“I do have a suspect,” he said.
“That’s not what Lieutenant Agannis says.”
“Okay. Don’t believe me,” he said.
“No, no. Keep talking.”
“I even have a name. But you can’t print it.”
“Can you tell me?”
“I want to tell you. You can’t repeat it. But you can help me investigate.” He assessed her. “Yes?”
“Of course,” she answered.
“Henry Flaherty,” Brooks said.
“Who’s he?”
Brooks shrugged. “My suspect. Or maybe a link to the suspect. The name ties into the case some way.”
“How do you know that?”
“It just kind of came to me.”
“Oh, come on.”
“Trust me, Andrea. I know. And I can’t give you a source.”
She thought about it for a moment. She was jotting in her notepad.
“This is where you come in, Andrea. I gave you the tip. Now, don’t take this too personally, but I consider you nosy, pushy and aggressive. Obnoxious, also. Did I mention that?”
“Not today. But from time to time previously. Hey, I’m from New Jersey originally, so I take those as good qualities.”
“So you do some digging for me, Andrea. Figure out where I can find Henry Flaherty or how I can identify him, and I’ll give you the whole story. Top to bottom. Every bizarre piece of it.”
“All this for identifying ‘Henry Flaherty’ for you?”
“Yup. As long as you’re first.”
“All right,” she said. “It’s a deal.”
“I know.”
Her fingernail polish was the color of a fire engine. Considering how fast her fingers moved across her note pad, the color was more than justified.
“When you check the name out, you might dig through some newspaper archives,” Brooks suggested. “Marriages. Deaths. Check everything. I’ve done the same on the island. And can’t find anything. “
He watched her write.
“Don’t be afraid to dig back too far. Many years.”
“Like how many? Five? Ten?”
“Stay in the twentieth century,” he said.
She stopped writing again and looked up.
“What?” she asked.
“I’m looking for someone who may have been dead for a long time.”
“This is for real?”
“This is for real.”
“So you’re looking for a ghost?”
“I’m looking for a link to my current case. Just find me the right Henry Flaherty, Andrea, and everything else should drop into place. I’ll explain it then. Okay?”
She went back to her pad. “What can I print, meantime?” she asked.
“Well, anything you want. But cut out the occult stuff. Cut out the séance. If anything comes of the latter, you’ll have the story first.” He paused. She seemed to be receiving his request and viewing it as reasonable. “And cut out the alleged romance between any aforementioned police officer and any unnamed actress. Please?”
“‘Alleged?’”
“That’s part of the deal, Andrea. Take it or leave it.”
“Aw, Timmy. You cut the heart out of my work sometimes.”
“Sorry. “
She stared at him for several seconds, “So you really are sleeping with a glamorous babe?” she finally said. “Wow.”
“Andrea…”
“Lucky girl,” she said. “When she’s finished with you, I’ll be happy to pick up where she left, okay? Assuming there’s anything left.”
>
She rose and blew him a kiss. “Henry Flaherty,” she said aloud. “I’ll be back in touch.”
Then she departed.
Chapter Fifty
Brooks stood alone on the basketball court in the dying light of day. He had already waited for George Osaro for fifteen minutes. He had worked up a good sweat on his own, alternately making and missing shots from the three point line.
He moved to the free throw line and sank five in a row. Still no George.
He retrieved the ball, returned to the foul line and sank four more. Then another two. That made eleven.
His personal best was thirty-one. Oh, he reasoned, why couldn’t the rest of life be like foul shooting? He was up to seventeen straight when he heard the cranky wheezing engine of George Osaro’s ancient Voyager pull into the driveway of the high school and rumble toward the court.
Brooks hit three more. He was at twenty.
“Where have you been?” Brooks called as Osaro stepped out of his van.
Osaro made an indecipherable gesture with his hands.
“I’m going for twenty-one straight,” Brooks shouted. “Can’t miss tonight.”
“Yeah?” Osaro called back. He walked slowly toward the court.
“Yeah! “
“I can make you miss, Timmy,” Osaro shouted back. “Just by thinking about it.”
“Bull!”
Brooks returned to the foul line. He aimed carefully, just as he had the twenty previous shots. He stuck his tongue out at his friend, who stood and watched, arms folded.
Brooks shot.
The ball hit the front rim, bounced erratically, and fell away from the hoop. The bounce was so unusual that Brooks stared at it for a second, not believing his eyes, wondering if it had hit something in the air.
“Better luck next time, bubba,” Osaro said, striding toward his friend.
The ball rolled to a corner of the court and stopped. So much for Brooks’ streak.
“I have to think that my streak would still be going if you hadn’t arrived,” Brooks said.
