Ghost Box

by Derek Neville

  The man turned then, his own chest moving up and down with exertion, and looked over his shoulder right up toward where the camera was.

  Boyd felt his heart pounding in his chest as the man seemed to be looking right up at him. Half his face a scowl, the other cast in shadow. The image jumped again, went in and out of focus as what looked like snow flurries drifted over the screen. When the image readjusted, the room was empty again like no one had ever been there. But there was no mistaking that Boyd had just watched his best friend murder two people.

  -17-

  The phone at the desk was ringing when Boyd returned to the lobby. He was still trying to process what he had just seen in the security room, so he was relieved to hear Donnie’s voice on the line and not someone else’s.

  “Boyd,” Donnie started, “we need to talk.”

  Boyd almost laughed at the absurdity of it. He realized then that he desperately needed someone to confess things to. Someone to listen to the outpouring of everything that had been happening to him. Donnie would be that someone.

  “I couldn’t agree more,” Boyd replied. “There’s some —”

  “Teddy tells me you’re drinking on the job again and you let the building get vandalized.”

  Boyd’s breath caught in his throat. He was gripping the phone so hard that he thought he might break it. “That’s not true, Don. I don’t know why Teddy would even say that, look you need to —”

  “You had a simple fucking job, Boyd. I asked you to do one thing and you can’t even do that. What a pathetic excuse for a man you are.”

  Boyd went to reply, but then stopped. He’d never heard Donnie swear in his life. Even when he was pissed, he’d say “dammit” and then apologize for his language.

  “Who is this?” Boyd whispered.

  The line filled with laughter like a room of people were crowding around the phone to listen to Boyd’s conversation. He heard the sound of the phone exchanging hands. The voice that entered Boyd’s eardrum was one he had not heard in years, yet it was still unusually oily and self-satisfied.

  “You look tired, Boyd. Why don’t you sleep off your drunk? Morgan will be fine.”

  “Stop it,” Boyd cried, but it was barely audible.

  “She’s a good girl and such a pretty little thing, ain’t she?”

  He slammed the phone down and it ricocheted off the cradle and clattered to the floor, where for good measure Boyd kicked it to send it sliding into a corner of the lobby. He put a hand to his mouth and one across his body to stop them from shaking. As he was thinking of what to do next his train of thought was broken by the static crackle of the walkie that had been left on the desk.

  “Boyd?” a voice crackled. “You there, bud?”

  He turned his head to look at the walkie. The voice sounded like Teddy, but now he couldn’t be sure. He grabbed the walkie and pulled it to his lips.

  “Teddy?”

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m in the lobby,” Boyd said. “What in the hell is going on?”

  He wanted to scream, but tried to choke down the rising feeling of helplessness that was percolating in his chest.

  “I don’t know. I’m in some trouble.”

  “What do you mean? Talk to me.”

  No answer from the walkie, just the hiss of static.

  “I’ll come get you, just tell me where you are.”

  “Where it began,” Teddy said, but Boyd was having trouble hearing him as his voice was so soft. “I’m on the third floor. Don’t come up here, Boyd. I don’t think I’m alone.”

  Boyd swallowed hard and double checked that his gun was on his hip. He took off in the direction of the elevator bank. It was there that he heard a sound that caused something very cold and needle-like to spread across his body.

  The elevator had chimed.

  He watched in strange fascination as the white lights of the floor numbers above the elevator door descended. “Ted … is that you coming down in the elevator?” Boyd asked into the walkie.

  A pause, then Teddy’s voice, “I’m not anywhere near an elevator, I don’t think.”

  A voice in Boyd’s head voted not to find out who or what was coming down. He dashed for the doorway to his right that lead into a long corridor. He was still in a run as he rounded the corner, his heart hammering in his chest reminding him how out of shape he was. He bent over at the knees and inhaled as if there wasn’t enough oxygen in the room.

  Behind him, he heard the door to the corridor click open, and Boyd became very still. He leaned back against the wall and nudged his face to the corner so he could peek into the hallway. Whoever it was hadn’t turned the corner yet, or perhaps they were waiting for him to reveal his location.

  Boyd looked to his right and noticed another elevator bank. He went to it and frantically pressed the chrome button to bring the cart down. He could hear footsteps in the corridor behind him, but they were almost muted next to the pulse throbbing in his ears. The doors to the elevator opened with a chime and Boyd’s knee finally gave as he fell into the cart and the doors shut behind him.

  -18-

  The air on the third floor was perhaps colder than it was the last time Boyd was up there. It seeped into his nostrils and lungs like ice water. He kept a smaller flashlight on his belt, but it didn’t cast as much light as the big utility one he’d left downstairs. It snapped on with a click and the dim white arc fell onto the carpeted hallway. Boyd pulled the walkie free from its clip and spoke into it.

  “Teddy,” he whispered. “I’m here. Where you at?”

  No answer, just a cackling static response.

  The gloom of the hall seemed alive in front of his face, like he was stepping through a tangible dark cloud of it. He got about halfway down before reaching the junction when he heard what sounded like muffled voices behind him. He turned the light back toward where he had come from, but it was like having the high beams of a car on while driving down a foggy road.

  He turned to move forward and for one startling moment he thought he had caught a silhouette of someone standing there in the doorway. Someone staring back, staring through him. He shone the light there, but it revealed the door was only tilted open a crack. It was the same room Boyd had meant to go in earlier.

  Boyd approached, hung there for a second as he could hear voices on the other side of the door. They were young; two boys, it sounded like. One asked, “Do you think Mrs. Fickett is going to give us a quiz in trig?”

  “Who cares?” the other replied. “The class is a joke.”

  “Yeah, maybe for you,” the first voice said. “What am I going to do?”

  “I think you should kill her.”

  Boyd’s hand spun around the frozen doorknob in his palm and he took a deep breath in and opened the door.

  The room inside was nothing more than two twin beds stripped of their linens, a desk, and a TV mounted to the wall. No boys, though. Boyd noticed that in random spots in the room locusts were clinging to the curtains, the night table, the walls and the ceiling.

  “Boyd, you there?” Teddy asked. The walkie crackled back to life.

  “Yeah, I’m here. Where the hell are you? We gotta go right now.”

  Teddy breathed heavily over the walkie.

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “See,” Teddy said, his voice sounded like he was far away, maybe not even in the building. “I figured it all out. I messed up. Big time.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Remember how I was always ‘fraid Gina was cheating on me? Well, turned out I was right.”

  “Jesus…,” Boyd muttered. “Teddy, now is not —”

  “She was seeing this guy at work. Thing is I never found out his name, but I followed him home one night and … and I shot him, Boyd.”

  Boyd’s eyes started to move across the room, looking for something — he wasn’t sure what yet. More time, possibly. He didn’t like the way Teddy was talking. His friend’s v
oice was thick like he’d been crying.

  “And I put on a brave face,” Teddy continued. “I thought if I didn’t think about it that it’d go away. I was doing good too. Then after I started here I started getting phone calls, not like the one I made you listen to, but from him, from the man I shot.”

  “Teddy, slow down. Take a breath.”

  “I have to pay the price, Boyd. He made me kill some poor girl. I didn’t even want to do that. He said … he said, ‘what’s one more adulterer laid to waste?’”

  Boyd listened to the sobs coming over the walkie and started to pace the room. “I don’t believe you’d kill anyone. You’re a good man, Teddy. Whatever happened, or you think happened, it wasn’t you.”

  “I did kill someone, and now I have to pay the price. He said so.”

  “Who said so?” Boyd asked, trying not to shout. “You’re not making any sense.”

  “Badge said so. He’s shown me the error of my ways. He unlocked the door to the roof. Told me to jump. He said it’s better this way. For everyone.”

  “Teddy,” Boyd said. “Wherever you are, stay there. I’ll come get you.”

  “It’s too late for me, pal.”

  Boyd put a hand to his face and felt the cold sweat there on his forehead. “Let me just think for a moment,” he pleaded.

  “See you on down the line, Boyd.”

  “Teddy!”

  From the corner of his eye and to the left he saw something clip past the window and then he heard a sound that caught the pulse in his throat.

  It was a crash — the shattering of glass — followed by a car alarm. Boyd ran to the window and pressed his hands against it as he looked down.

  Teddy Barrios lay disheveled, legs twisted sideways, body contorted in what was left of Boyd’s truck.

  -19-

  He took the stairs down to the lobby; the elevator on the third floor seemed too claustrophobic, and he didn’t trust his odds relying on the building to allow him safe passage. The elevator doors were still open downstairs when Boyd approached the elevator bank. He’d forgotten about them. Everything prior to Teddy jumping off the roof seemed to be a dull, foreign memory in someone else’s mind. He stopped himself in time to make sure he moved past on the defensive, but the cart was empty.

  There was a phone in the manager’s office behind the front desk, and Boyd took the phone off its cradle and returned to his former post. He attempted to dial out, not convinced that anyone would come because of the car alarm. He glanced up over the desk and caught Teddy’s lifeless gaze staring back in at him from where his body had landed on the truck.

  “911, how may I assist you?” the operator’s voice asked.

  “Yes,” Boyd started, but then another voice was cutting him off.

  “Time of death, 2:30 a.m. Self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Deceased’s name was Boyd Dwyer.”

  Boyd flinched, and went to hang up when a second voice was fluttering into his ear drum. It was soft, and blew across him like a cool wind coming off the water.

  “Take the gun … blow yourself away. It’ll feel good. It’ll feel right.”

  Boyd looked up and saw Teddy, and registering what had happened to his friend seemed to lessen the magnetic pull the phone was having on him. He disconnected the line and placed the phone back on his desk. He took the gun out of his holster and stuffed it into one of the drawers. In an odd way it seemed more comforting to have it not on his person. He put a hand over his mouth and thought on what to do. The main strip was about five, maybe six miles away on foot. Nothing would be open, but there was a chance he could flag someone down.

  A strange noise caught his attention then.

  It was indistinct at first, soft enough that he thought it was coming from inside his own head. Ba-ba-ba-bump … Ba-ba-ba-bump… Ba-ba-ba-bump…

  He cocked his head. It sounded like … drums?

  Straight out of a parade, he thought bitterly. Boyd saw them before he heard the sound again. It was like they had come right out of the night. They approached, dressed in black, from the bottom of the incline. Their faces were the color of soot. They marched a stoic line toward where Boyd’s truck was. The rhythmic beating of the drums causing the window panes to rattle.

  A closed door opened in Boyd’s mind and a thought occurred to him. On the second floor was a restaurant and bar. He guessed that the back door would lead out to the service road. The same road where Teddy had left his truck. It was a long shot, but it was the only hand he had left to play.

  Boyd fled from the desk and down the hall toward the stairwell. As he reached the first landing and the door was swinging shut behind him, he could hear the voices yelling and howling as they entered the lobby.

  -20-

  The emergency lights were flickering when Boyd slid out of the stairwell and into the corridor for the second floor. He lost his balance for a moment in the darkish hallway. He was out of breath, too — a sharp pinch of pain was clinching his sides and wouldn’t allow enough air into his lungs.

  Once he steadied himself, he rounded the corner and took the small staircase into the large hall that was the waiting area for the restaurant. The frosted glass doors were closed — locked, most likely — and if he had been doing his rounds like he was supposed to he’d already be privy to this information.

  He’d seen an axe mounted in a glass box next to the door for the stairs.

  As he was about to head in that direction, someone called to him. He ignored it at first as there was no way the voice he heard could really be hers.

  She called again, “Dad.”

  His feet stopped, as if he had just realized he was walking across a sheet of ice. He turned his head, even though his instincts told him not to. She stood there beneath the overhead lights of the hall. She wore the same faded army-green jacket, her dark red hair hung past her shoulders. Her lip was cut.

  “Leaving me again?” she asked.

  He hung against the wall, a deep ache crawling through his chest.

  “No,” he whispered. “God … Morgan.”

  In his mind’s eye he saw a burning light, bringing him back to the Sunday afternoon that he’d woken up in his bed to find her on his couch. Boyd was never someone who slept in. His father, a military man, would have him up at daybreak to work on his studies or begin the maintenance on their farmhouse that always seemed to be falling apart. Even when Boyd would work patrol or work surveillance until the early hours, he’d still rise at 5 a.m.

  Sleeping into the late afternoon didn’t start until drinking was less something he did and more something he needed to do to keep everything and everyone away from him. The nights would run together and sometimes he’d wake in his bed or a stranger’s house and not remember where the week had gone.

  He had desperately needed it. Not because it would make him feel good, but because it would help numb and deaden the anger he had inside himself. He didn’t know when his focus had changed, but he found himself no longer wanting to solve murders, but instead wanting to punish the ones who caused them. If he thought hard on it, perhaps it started with the father who had taken his daughter’s face to the stove burner and didn’t stop until there was nothing left that was the least recognizable. Boyd would follow him later and make the man beg for his life as he stuffed his gun down the man’s throat until he was sobbing and crying for Boyd not to kill him.

  He was serving day three of his suspension when he saw her asleep there on his couch. Her mouth almost puckered together as she slept with her face pressed up against her hand. When he woke her, he told her that she needed to go home, that her mother would yell at him, not her, for being there.

  She wanted to know why she couldn’t stay and he told her that he was off to a friend’s house. That part wasn’t a lie; he just left out the part where he wanted to drink until his eyes hit oblivion. He wouldn’t remember the circumstances later, maybe she had guilted him into it or maybe he was in one of his better moods, but there she was in the cab of his
truck as they rode down a gravel road toward a two-story house that sat in between the high trees and the lake.

  The events of the day were fragmented, like his mind had been. It was just supposed to be Trent, a former narcotics officer he’d been tight with for years, doing a little fishing and some day-drinking. When night fell, more guests arrived, rowdy ones who brought booze and mood enhancers. Everyone seemed to be wearing masks and playing the part of weird caricatures of themselves.

  Through the suspended animation of his mind he recalled meeting Billy, a man with a big gap in his teeth and a purple birthmark over the right side of his face like war paint. Billy had said, “You look tired, Boyd. Why don’t you sleep off your drunk? Morgan will be fine.”

  He could recall Billy walking up and away from the fire, the orange glow playing off his face. The man had turned, looked at Boyd, and laughed in his high-pitched wheeze.

  Morgan hadn’t been fine. She had called out to him, screamed. He wasn’t sure if he had imagined that part or not, but he was in another place and he’d simply shut the door so he wouldn’t hear her.

  “No,” he said again. “Not here.”

  “You left me,” she replied, just as cold as the sweat on his neck felt.

  “Stop!” he cried. “You’re not real. Get out of my way.”

  That very next morning he found her on the sand embankment, nude, apart from her T-shirt which had been left ripped at the collar. She was half in the lake, half out of it. The water was calm and he thought it was strange he couldn’t hear any insects or birds coming alive. What startled him the most was how calm he was about it. How relaxed he felt when he checked to see if she had a pulse. It was then he realized how disconnected he’d become from everything. He put a hand out, surprised it was as steady as it was, and pushed her hair back off her face.

  He felt a cold hand touching his palm and it brought him back. He glanced toward the hallway from where he came. There were shadows on the wall, twisting, and gyrating in deformed motions. The drums of the marching band rumbled in his ears. They had followed him…