by Ron Ripley
The air warmed up for less than a minute, then the temperature plummeted again, and Molly said, “There’s a car. Weird looking, but it’s a car. There are a couple of guys sitting in it.”
“They won’t come in,” Jonathan said, closing his eyes.
“Why not?” Molly asked.
“No one has in years.” He caressed the cover of the book and relaxed at the familiar tactile sensation.
“Can I play if they come in?” Molly asked, and she sounded like a little girl requesting a new toy for her birthday.
“Yes,” Jonathan whispered. “I think that would be fine.”
Chapter 5: Whiskey and Bad Decisions
“I’m telling you,” Lenny said, sitting behind the wheel of the Mustang, “it’ll be like taking candy from a damned baby.”
Gary spit a stream of tobacco juice into the Gatorade bottle, flecks of chew clinging to the sides of the plastic while the liquid went rolling towards the bottom to join the rest.
“Last time you said that,” Gary said around the wad of chew tucked between his lip and lower jaw, “we ended up doing thirty days in county for possession with intent.”
Lenny frowned and ignored the statement.
“Look,” Lenny said, “ain’t nobody seen Wharton since my mom got out of prison. Sure, they still deliver mail and stuff, but they do that all the time to people who are dead.”
Gary didn’t answer, but he listened, which was always the worst decision when it came to Lenny.
“Now he used to show up regular to Tatum’s Grocery over in Rockport,” Lenny said, grinning. “He’d pick up canned goods and toilet paper. Nothing else.”
“How the hell do you know that?” Gary demanded.
“Shirley,” Lenny said, straightening up. “She told me.”
“Shirley’s a meth-head who doesn’t remember how to tie her shoelaces,” Gary scoffed. “How in the hell is she going to remember anything that happened, what, twenty years ago?”
“Shut up,” Lenny grumbled. “You listen, she remembers. She remembers because she said he bought the same stuff all of the time. All of the time. Spam and peas, and brown bread. That canned bread. You know, the kind your grandma made every Friday with the pork and beans.”
Gary did remember, and he didn’t say anything else for a minute. Before Lenny could get going again, Gary asked, “What are we even looking for in there?”
“Money,” Lenny said proudly.
“Money?” Gary asked. “Money? Are you out of your damned mind? Wharton never had no money. Nothing! People don’t even know what he did for work, to begin with!”
“I do,” Lenny said, winking.
“Oh yeah?” Gary asked. “And what was that?”
“He wrote dirty stories,” Lenny said in a conspiratorial whisper. “Hundreds and hundreds of them for all them magazines. They paid him good, too.”
Gary opened his mouth to argue with Lenny, and then he closed it.
Lenny had a point.
Gary’s cousin Barbara supported herself, her six kids, and her good for nothing husband by being a friendly voice on the phone. She was a real sweet talker, and nobody on the other end knew she looked like a sunburned pig in a house dress.
Nobody cared.
And nobody would have cared what Wharton looked like as long as he could write a dirty story.
“You think he’s got money in there?” Gary asked, spitting into the bottle again.
“Sure as hell do,” Lenny said, grinning.
“Hm,” Gary said. He looked out the mud-splattered window of the Mustang at the house at the end of the driveway. “Might as well go find out.”
Lenny let out a high-pitched laugh, and the two of them climbed out of the car.
They approached the house with cautious steps. A cat yowled off to the right, and another answered it from closer to the house.
“Front or back?” Gary asked.
Lenny glanced toward the road and said, “Damn. Might as well go around to the back. We can always say we were out chasing the cats that live all over this place.”
Gary shrugged and said, “Cool.”
They cut through the tall, unkempt grass while a few small, feral kittens went racing away from them. A smell wafted from the house, a revolting scent that reminded Gary of a ruptured septic tank.
When they reached the rear of the building, Lenny came to a sharp stop.
“What the hell?” Gary demanded.
Lenny pointed, shaking his head.
At least twenty cats were in a wide semi-circle around the back door. Some of them were crouched low, others in the stereotypical position with the tail upraised and the back arched. A low, disturbing sound came rolling out of the feline cats. It was a strange noise; one that set Gary’s teeth on edge, and made him doubt his decision to join Lenny for a ride.
He spat on the ground and asked, “What are they looking at?”
“Don’t know,” Lenny answered. “They’re all just staring at the house. I can’t see anything, though. Can you?”
Gary shook his head. “Nothing.”
Even as the word left his mouth, the grass around the back door was pressed back, as if someone had turned on a huge fan, the long-stemmed grass undulating. A cold breeze washed over him, and Gary took a nervous step back.
Lenny glanced at him. “Where are you going?”
“There’s something wrong, you idiot!” Gary hissed, gesturing at the cats and the grass. “Are you telling me you’re so thick that you can’t see that?”
“The cats are inbred,” Lenny said, “and obviously it’s windy.”
“You see anything else moving in the wind?” Gary snapped.
“Shut up,” was Lenny’s petulant response.
One of the cats yowled, then the others joined in, and a heartbeat later, the animals sprinted past them, leaving the two men alone in the backyard.
“It’s time to go, Lenny,” Gary whispered.
“Too late for that,” a voice said from behind them.
Gary twisted around, his foot catching on a rock and sending him sprawling to the ground. He looked up at Lenny and saw his friend’s eyes widen, his face go pale, his lips moving.
Gary didn’t know what Lenny was going to say, or what he wanted to do because all of his friend’s choices were removed in a burst of flame.
Lenny’s burst of flame.
Fire sprouted from the man’s nose and mouth. Smoke came out of his ears in an almost cartoonish fashion. His hair exploded, and his skin bubbled. Gary watched as his friend’s eyes burst, the remains running down his cheeks with the consistency of runny eggs. Unable to move, Gary couldn’t tear his gaze away as fire devoured Lenny.
His friend shuddered, shook, and collapsed lifelessly to the ground. The smell of burning pork filled the air, and Gary’s wits came back to him.
He tried to scramble to his feet, but a blow from behind him knocked him to the ground again. His eyes rolled in his head as he tried to regain his composure.
A shadow darkened the sky, and Gary looked up.
He saw nothing, only a dark cloud that seemed to hover in front of him.
“You’re not as stupid as your friend,” the cloud said, slowly forming into the shape of a teenage girl. “But you’re still pretty stupid.”
Gary opened his mouth to argue, but his words were devoured by the flames that sprang forth.
Chapter 6: Paranoia Runs Deep
Stefan felt miserable.
While he had never enjoyed his trips beyond his compound, they had taken on a terrible life of their own. Each time he was compelled to leave, he did so knowing full well that the man who had tried to kill him remained at large. And that was in addition to the fact that the police might connect Stefan to Jeremy Rhinehart’s murder in Fox Cat Hollow.
The fear reminded him of when his half-sister had hunted him, and he despised it.
He had spent additional funds on establishing motion sensor lights farther up the road that lead to the
warehouse. Stefan had also added an extended ring of cameras to the perimeter, and when he went into the observation room shortly after having woken up, there was an alert on his home screen.
The monitoring software he had installed had picked up and isolated the wireless feed he had been trying to hunt down since the failed attempt on his life.
Stefan quickly typed in his passcode, accessed the account, and looked at the feed.
What he found drove a cold, hard spike of mixed hatred and fear into his stomach.
He was looking at not one video feed, but four. Whoever was watching him had placed a camera on each side of the building. No matter where Stefan exited his home from, the unseen watcher would know it.
Stefan stared at the screen for a moment longer, then, with an angry grumble, he turned the monitor off.
Swearing under his breath, Stefan stood up, shoving his chair back before he went stomping out of the room. He went to the kitchen, skipped his morning coffee, and reached for the vodka. Without bothering with a glass, Stefan opened the bottle, brought the mouth of it up to his lips, and took a long, bitter pull from it. He only stopped when he needed to breathe, his mouth burning, and his eyes watering from the strength of the alcohol.
Stefan gripped the counter with one hand to steady himself, then he took another, smaller drink.
He knew it had to be the man who had tried to kill him. And Stefan felt certain his father and step-sister had put the man up to it. The stranger had been skilled. Extremely so, and Stefan suspected that the man had misjudged Stefan’s own capabilities.
It wasn’t a mistake the stranger was apt to make twice.
Furious, Stefan brought the bottle back with him into the observation room. He turned on the monitor, immediately exited the feed for the enemy’s cameras, and sat down. In silence, Stefan brought up his sales and pondered over them. He tried to focus, realized that he wouldn’t be able to, and shifted his attention to the newspapers where he had shipped various items off.
His anger increased, rising to a steady speed until he shoved the mouse away from him and pressed his hands against his eyes. The websites were empty of any sort of information regarding the dead and the damage they could inflict.
Grinding his teeth in frustration, Stefan took a deep breath and reminded himself it was only a matter of time before something happened.
Dropping his hands from his face, Stefan took hold of the mouse and began to search his sales again, hoping to find something there to appease his anger.
There wasn’t.
Stefan snarled and threw the mouse across the room, the plastic shattering against the wall. He sat in the chair for several minutes, irate and unable to move.
Finally, when he had calmed down, Stefan opened his desk drawer, took out a new mouse, and went through the familiar motions of getting it ready.
Chapter 7: Close and Closer Still
Victor had his hands in his pockets as he walked along the wooded trail that cut through the acreage behind his rented house. Tom was off again with Iris, and Nicholas had been sulking. The boy seemed to have less time for the dead man, now that there was a young woman in his life.
Victor suspected that Nicholas feared Tom’s interest in revenge had begun to wane, but Victor knew it wasn’t true. Each night he could hear Tom cry himself to sleep, and he knew there was still a strong hatred in the boy’s heart. Tom was simply biding his time.
The boy was far from stupid, and Victor respected that. Nicholas couldn’t quite seem to grasp it, but Victor felt it was due to the man being dead. There was a disconnect that the dead man couldn’t overcome.
The trail dipped down, curved into a small ravine, and followed a narrow stream that moved sluggishly over smooth stones and exposed roots. Leaves clung to the edges and formed rough barricades among dead fall and piles of rocks. Birds sang in the tops of the trees and squirrels complained vociferously about Victor’s invasion of their domain.
He smiled at the noises the creatures made and enjoyed the relative silence around him.
Twice a day he walked the trail, following it to where it ended behind the Fox Cat Hollow Library. When he saw the library’s dark blue dumpster, he turned around and retraced his steps. He found the walk peaceful, and it allowed him to clear his mind. In addition to that, it reminded him of a more peaceful time, when he and Erin would go out for their walks.
He had hated their strolls, and had only gone on them to spend time with her. Victor had never prescribed to his late wife’s belief that walking was good for him.
He had since changed his opinion on the subject. Walking kept Erin close to him, especially since he had a constant fear that he would forget her. That one day he wouldn’t be able to remember what she looked like. What she sounded like. How she smelled when she stepped out of the shower, or the look of concern that would creep onto her face as she read an intense scene in one of her books.
The path twisted away from the stream, and by slow measures, it climbed up out of the ravine. Victor began to see the telltale signs of people. Old beer and soda cans, a plastic shopping bag from a grocery store fluttering in the clutches of a struggling pine.
The trail became steeper, and his thighs complained as he climbed up to the rear parking lot of the library.
When he reached it, Victor paused as he always did, took a deep breath, and then coughed as someone said his name.
Jerking to the left, Victor saw a small, black Audi parked off in the corner. A woman sat on the hood, and he recognized her as Ivan Denisovich’s daughter.
“How did you find me here?” Victor asked, unable to keep the surprise and incredulity out of his voice.
She smirked at him. “You’re a creature of habit, Victor. Which is a good thing, I suppose. You hunt the dead and not the living. Well, you hunt one living person, but he really doesn’t worry about you. Otherwise, you would be one of the dead.”
Victor was going to argue the point, then he realized it was futile. The woman was right.
She pushed herself up and off the car, grimacing for a split second before limping towards him. In her hand, she held a rolled up newspaper.
“This is for you,” she said, holding it out to him.
“What is it?” he asked.
“A newspaper,” the woman replied, giving him a wink.
“I suppose I should have asked why,” he said, shaking his head.
“That is a better question,” she agreed. “The answer to that is the front page article about the two men burned to death.”
“Why is that interesting to me?” he asked, opening the paper. His eyes scanned for the story, and he found it at the bottom of the page.
“The story says the men were burned to death,” the woman said. “No mention of the accelerant. And there’s no suspect in the case either.”
“Okay,” Victor said. “So what?”
“So,” Denisovich’s daughter said, “they don’t mention it because they don’t know. They don’t mention it because the two men burned from the inside out.”
Victor looked at her.
There was no trace of humor on her face, or in her voice when she spoke again.
“I spoke with one of the morticians,” she said, “and he cheerfully talked shop. They don’t know how it happened, or why.”
“But you do,” Victor said.
She nodded. “There was a book my father’s wife had owned. An old paperback copy of a Tolkien. The Hobbit, I believe. Anyway, the ghost who possessed the book was a young woman when she died. She had killed her boyfriend and his family. Well, she had killed them all, then she set the whole house on fire.”
“Damn,” Victor murmured.
“For whoever upsets her,” Ivan’s daughter said. “Now, did you see where this happened?”
Victor shook his head and looked at the name of the paper. The Parkersburg News and Sentinel, from Parkersburg, West Virginia. He frowned, then glanced at her. “This is close by?”
She gave him a wink an
d a nod. “Smarter than the average bear, Victor. Yes, you are.”
He watched as she went to the driver’s side of the car and let herself in. Victor stepped back as the engine roared into life and she beeped the horn twice at him, giving him a friendly wave before she shifted into drive and left him in the library’s parking lot. After she had vanished around the corner of the building, Victor rolled the paper into a tight cylinder and stuffed it into his back pocket.
He walked home faster than he had anticipated, the paper rubbing against his back while he fought the urge to text Tom to come home.
***
After dinner, Tom went up to his room to do some of his reading. Sitting down on the bed, his phone rang, and the call was from a private number. Frowning, he reached out, picked it up and answered it.
“Hello?”
“Hey, kid,” Shane Ryan said. “How are you?”
Tom grinned and settled back on his bed. “Okay. I was about to do my homework.”
“Homework?” Shane asked. “Oh, hell, that’s right. Victor, has you doing that for the next school year, right?”
“Yeah,” Tom answered.
“Ah, I guess it’s a good thing,” Shane said, and Tom heard the man exhale. “Anyway, I called because I have a friend you can talk to if you still want to learn about whether or not you can see the dead.”
“I still do,” Tom said. “I checked out some of those websites that you recommended, and I’ve been training my eyes to stay still when I think I’ve seen something.”
“Good,” Shane said. “Real good, kid. Keep that up, but I want you to write this number down, okay?”
“Sure,” Tom said. “I’m going to put you on speaker so I can do that. Can’t really hold the phone too well with the prosthetic yet.”
“Whatever you need to do,” Shane said.
A moment later, Tom said, “Okay, go ahead.”
Shane gave him a number, Tom read it back, and then picked the phone back up.
“So,” Tom said, “who’s that?”
“Friend of mine named Brian,” Shane answered. “He and his wife, they’ve actually written a few of the articles I’ve had you read. I talked to him about you, and he said it was okay to give him a call. He might be able to help you fine-tune it, if you’ve really got the gift.”
