Psychosis_When a Dream Turns Deadly

by Roger Bray

  “Little like a child who tortures animals and grows up to be a mass murderer.”

  “A bit of a stretch but sure, I guess. For my mom it was a little too weird. Imagine what kids would have made of it.”

  “This is what you hid from Cheryl?”

  Todd nodded glumly.

  “I guess I’d lived with the idea that it was a little strange for so long that it got harder to drop it into a conversation.”

  “I can imagine,” Steve muttered before saying, “People must know though. I mean, if you’re selling them, you would have to advertise them. People must know?”

  Todd went to a computer hidden behind the door. He turned the monitor on and once the screen was up, he brought up his browser. A couple of clicks and a professional web page was displayed advertising “Anita Kirby’s Little Friends and Family”

  “This is you?”

  “Sure is, and nobody will ever know. Anita has more street cred in doll making than Todd Bailey ever could.”

  Steve shook his head as he looked at the web page. He wasn’t sure if it was the dismantling of his theory behind Hazel’s disappearance that annoyed him or the fact that people were apparently happy to pay over two thousand dollars for a unique doll.

  “Well, Todd, I think we’re done here. Thanks for your time.”

  Todd looked at them.

  “I’m sorry for Hazel, and that I couldn’t help. That stupid phone will haunt me, and I can’t believe that I didn’t link the two things. If there’s anything I can do, please ask.”

  Now his secret was out, Todd seemed a lot more relaxed and even pleasant. Steve was starting to regret his earlier thoughts but was grateful that Alex hadn’t had the chance to beat the crap out of him.

  Todd led them to the front door and shook Steve’s hand and hugged Alice. Steve stepped out of the front door and took a couple of steps and as Alice went to follow him Todd asked, “Do you think Cheryl would see me?”

  Alice smiled, “She’s in the book, Todd. Give her a ring. I’m sure she would love to hear from you. Be honest with her though, OK?”

  Todd nodded his thanks and Alice turned toward Steve as he closed the door quietly behind her.

  Chapter Twelve

  The wind started to increase as a storm blew through Eugene and by the early evening the rain was coming in sideways and battering the front of the house, rattling the doors and the windows, hammering against the glass. When the power went out at about ten, they knew that it wasn’t going to let up anytime soon and the noise of the storm kept them awake most of the night.

  When her cell phone rang in the morning, she grumbled and tried to snuggle under the covers hoping that the constant rendition of Tubular Bells would go away. Steve leaned across and picked up the phone, struggling to answer it as he gathered his clothes and made his way to the lounge. Alice muttered her thanks and rolled over into the warm spot he had vacated and smiled as she fell asleep again.

  She didn’t know how much longer she managed to sleep. She thought it was probably no more than thirty minutes. The light was coming in around the cracks of the drapes, but it was the smell of bacon cooking from the kitchen that had woken her up. With that smell, she knew that there was no way to fall asleep again. She sighed and got up, pulling her wrap around her as she wandered into the kitchen to find Steve serving up a mountain of food for them.

  “Did the freezer break?” she asked looking at all the food.

  “What?” he smiled, “Oh, no it’s fine.”

  “So, you felt a bit peckish and decided to cook all the food in the house?”

  “No. We have a big day and I know you get cranky when you’re hungry.”

  Alice picked up and bit into a piece of toast.

  “Who was on the phone at this hellish hour?”

  “Ten past seven.”

  She picked up the second piece and looked over it waiting for his answer.

  “Alex. And that’s why we have a big day ahead of us.”

  “Why?”

  “The storm brought down the big Douglas fir in his back yard, on the fence line between him and Miss. Muir’s.”

  “Oh no, any damage?”

  “Apparently not. It ripped up the fence as it went and dropped quite nicely in the gap toward Jim’s house but the top smashed into the side of Jim’s, so we have to clear it up and see.”

  Her hand went to her mouth, “Jim?”

  “He’s away which is why Alex rang to ask us to go over and give him a hand.”

  Breakfast eaten they detoured passed Steve’s house, and he picked up his chain saw and a collection of other tools and protective equipment. Within thirty minutes they were at Alex’s and walked down the side of the house to find him and Mrs. Muir standing looking at the big tree now lying across three yards. Moth the cat thought that they had done it for him and he was checking out his new cat tower, getting covered in needles and wet cobwebs in the process.

  “It almost seems a shame to cut it up,” Alex laughed.

  They came up with a plan to cut away all the branches that they could get to close to the trunk and drag them out of the way. Once they’d made a start, they could work toward Jim’s house where the top of the tree was hard up against the side wall. Behind the jumble of branches were the double patio doors which led into the dining room.

  Steve pulled on his face shield and unpacked his chainsaw. He started it and let it idle for a few moments to get the oil flowing. When he was happy, he gave the trigger a couple of quick squeezes and he was ready to go.

  Moth decided that the noise was his prompt to leave and he took off in a little cloud of spines and jumped onto Alex’s patio table to watch from a safe distance.

  Miss Muir decided that she would be more help keeping them supplied with coffee and sandwiches, so she walked back along the tree to the big hole that was now in the fence line to go back to her own house. She called Moth who looked up for a moment before ignoring her and went back to trying to get some of the needles out of his coat.

  Steve stepped up to the tree and started to cut, trimming the branches effortlessly with the big Echo saw. He would wait while Alex pulled the loose branch out of his way to where Alice would take over and drag the branch off to stack it near the road where the pile would sit until they could organize a truck to come and pick it all up. Some of the bigger lumber they would probably need help with, but for now at least they would be able to clear around Jim’s house and clear a path to the door and check for damage.

  After three hours, the tree had been cleared almost up to the door and they could see that about five feet of it had smashed through the double doors and was lying in the dining room. There was glass all over the floor and in among the foliage making their progress a little slower. They were slowed down more when Alex was stabbed in the finger by a narrow and sharp piece of glass which had lodged into the end of a branch. Even though he had been wearing strong work gloves the sliver of glass had got him quite deeply in the web of skin between his thumb and finger.

  While Alex cleaned himself up and washed and disinfected the cut, all the while swearing a lot, Steve and Alice took the opportunity to have lunch. They sat at the patio table with Moth now lying on top. He occasionally looked at them in disgust that they were destroying his playground.

  He had ventured back to the work site once while they took a break but hadn’t liked the feeling of the sawdust on his feet. He retreated back to Alex’s patio in a series of steps and stops while he tried to shake the offending powder off his feet.

  Steve reached out and tickled the big cat between the ears. Taking the offered sign of apology, he started purring and curled up a bit closer so Steve could continue.

  Alex came out as they were finishing, and took a sandwich from the large plate that Miss. Muir had brought over for them.

  Steve put his mask back on and continued the branch trimming as Alice and Alex pulled them over to the increasing pile. Finally, they had reached a point where the broken area of
the doors was clear except for the tip of the tree laying inside.

  With a final cut, Steve cleared the tree back from the door. Turning off the saw, he helped Alex drag the piece of trunk away then returned and stepped into the house. There was surprisingly little damage inside. The doors were smashed, hanging half broken from their hinges, glass was everywhere and the dining table and half of the chairs were damaged but the impact had seemed to have been the final moment of the tree falling. Jim’s dining room was mostly intact.

  Steve stepped into the room through the shattered doors as Moth ventured over now the chain saw had been silenced. He jumped off the cut end of the trunk and Steve grabbed him as he was entering the house.

  “We need to keep him out at least until we have swept up. He’ll cut his feet on all this glass.”

  Alice took the protesting cat into the clear space in the middle of the lawn and let him go. He sat and looked back at them and protested with a little mewing noise but did not try to run back in.

  Alex came over with a broom, the only out door one he had and started sweeping the patio while Alice grabbed an indoor broom which she had found leaning against the wall in Jim’s kitchen. She began sweeping from where she could see the furthermost spread of the debris back toward the door.

  Steve packed his chainsaw and took off his mask, watching them sweep for a moment before walking to the back of the block to Jim’s garage. He opened the door and immediately found what he was looking for, a broad yard broom probably twice as wide as the one that Alex was using.

  With the three of them sweeping and Moth supervising, they had the glass and pieces of wood from the doors cleared away within thirty minutes. While Alex and Alice finished, Steve went to the local Home Depot and was back within thirty minutes with two sheets of 8 x 4 ply strapped to the roof racks of his car.

  They leaned the sheets near the doors and were deciding how to attach them when Moth decided that the area was safe for him to enter and wandered into the house and headed for the back.

  “Oh bother,” Alice exclaimed. “We’ll have to get him out before we can board up, all the other doors are dead bolted.”

  Steve laughed and followed Alice into the house. The afternoon was getting on and the sun was starting to settle, making the inside of the house a little dark so he turned the lights on as he walked through the house behind Alice who was gamely calling, “Moth get out here, you little scamp.”

  The cat ignored them, so they kept looking. Behind them Alex placed the first sheet over the hole where one of the doors had been and used some drywall screws to fasten it to the frame.

  Finally, they found Moth sitting in a room at the rear of the house. It looked like a study with a desk and a monitor sitting on it. A leather swivel chair sat in front and Moth was sitting next to the keyboard looking at them.

  Alice reached out to pick him up, but he jumped past her hands and onto the chair, and sat again looking at her. She shook her head while Steve looking from the doorway tried not to laugh.

  “Little bugger!” she muttered as she tried to grab the cat again.

  For such a big animal, he moved surprisingly fast, and he avoided her again as he jumped back to the desk. In one fluid movement he continued the jump and landed on the top of a filing cabinet next to the desk. As he made the jump, he landed on an uneven stack of a dozen hunting, shooting, and fishing magazines piled on top. The weight of the big cat was too much, and the pile started to fall. Moth, realizing that it was going wrong, tried to jump away but landed in Alice’s outstretched arms as the stack fell onto the floor.

  “Take him and I’ll clean-up,” Steve laughed stepping forward as Alice glared at the cat now apparently content and happy in her arms.

  Steve quickly started picking up magazines and placing them back onto the filing cabinet. He was a little too quick and the last few were not quite placed correctly and as he put them on top, they fell again. He grabbed and caught them and as he did something fell from the last magazine onto the floor.

  A photograph that had landed face down and he bent to pick it up. Turning it over as he went to stick it back between the pages, he saw that the picture was of a smiling Jim and … Hazel … standing under a large, redwood tree.

  Puzzled, he held the picture out under the ceiling light so he could see it more clearly and realized that it wasn’t Hazel, but it could have been her, easily.

  “What the hell,” he thought before calling, “Alice!”

  Alice had already walked out of the house through the broken door and didn’t hear him. He followed, clutching the picture in his hand.

  After being caught and escorted out, Moth seemed calm and happy to be in Alice’s arms and she stood smiling as Steve came out. Alex was lifting the second board. Rather than leave the picture in the house Steve shoved the picture into the back pocket of his jeans: it could wait for a few minutes while he helped Alex. In a few minutes they had placed the second sheet in place and Alex had fastened it securely with more dry-stone screws. Stepping back, he nodded, happy with the job.

  “Jim will have to get some new doors fitted but at least that will keep the weather out.”

  Alice let Moth go and he jumped down. He walked past Steve then turned and looked at him. With a final flick of his tail he jumped up onto the remains of trunk and wandered along it, his tail lazily weaving back and forth as he did. He reached the end of the trunk and the hole in the fence line where it had been looked back and meowed as he jumped down and disappeared into his own garden.

  “At least he waited until all the work was done before leaving,” Alex laughed as he gathered his tools.

  Once they had finished all that remained was Jim’s big yard broom and Steve grabbed it to put it away in the garage. His was thinking about the picture in his back pocket. It may be nothing, it probably was. After the complete failure of his suspicions about Todd he wasn’t about to jump into another half-assed leap in the dark. He had made the decision between calling out to Alice and almost bashing his head on the baton that Alex had attached. Alice hadn’t heard him call out, and he was glad about that.

  Opening the side door of the garage he went to put the broom back where he had found it. He realized how dark it was in there. No windows, a double door that was closed and the side door. Enough light came in for him to find the broom, but the rest of the area was in darkness. Steve didn’t know why he had thought of that and dismissed the thought as he propped the broom and turned to leave.

  Inside the door, in easy reach if you knew where it was, there was a light switch. Steve stepped through and was about to close the door when he thought, “What the hell. Why not?”

  He flicked the switch and the double tube light in the middle of the space clicked and flashed into life. The garage was as he expected it, knowing what he knew of Jim. A workbench ran along the end with tool racks marked and holding a selection of different tools. Everything in its place. A large, heavy-duty swivel vise closest to him and a woodworking vise built into the work bench about halfway along. Steve could see the tools hanging behind the bench were old but were good quality and well maintained.

  Looking along the bench to the end, Steve saw nothing to get excited about. A full height drill press near the far end and a foot or so forward an old door leaning against the wall. He was about to leave when he realized that the door wasn’t leaning. It was a door to another area. The garden to the back and sides of the garage were quite overgrown with shrubbery and Steve hadn’t realized that the building wasn’t rectangular as he thought, but was probably “L” shaped.

  The door was unlocked, and he opened it not knowing what to expect. Another light switch inside the door and a single tube light flickered on to reveal a storage room with shelves stacked with boxes, more tools and bags he guessed contained old clothes.

  “Shit” he muttered.

  In the center of the area stood two Rocky Mountain, mountain bikes. Top quality bikes in their day, older models but like everything else in th
e garage, well maintained. They were both the same model and the only difference seemed to be that one saddle was slightly higher than the other. The lower one would be about right for someone of Jim’s height. The taller one he guessed was Linda’s.

  He had never seen Jim riding a bike. And any link between a bike and Hazel’s disappearance had only become known when he had spoken to Ron Balfour. He shook his head as he went through what he knew of the night of Hazel’s disappearance in his mind. The bicycle that Ron thought that he had heard. The idea of a bike was dismissed until Phil had found the pattern of the tires in the back of the car.

  Steve took the picture from his back pocket and looked at it. They were standing on flat ground and the woman, who he was now sure was Linda, smiled into the camera. She was about three inches taller and her long auburn hair was parted in the center and hung down straight. Something Steve hadn’t seen when he had first looked at the picture was about six inches of a bicycle wheel at the edge of the scene. He tried to compare the wheel in the picture with the matching knobbly wheels on the two bicycles. Similar, impossible to match but he would put money on the bike in the picture being one of these two.

  He went back into the main garage area and found an inspection lamp and took it into the storage room. Plugging it into a wall socket he turned it on and placed it where it would light the back tires. Steve took out his cell phone and took a dozen pictures of each back wheel from different angles as well as the overall scene and the complete bikes. He was careful not to disturb anything and was already worried he might not put the light back in the right place and Jim would know that someone had been in there.

  Flicking through the pictures he had taken, he was satisfied that he had taken everything he might need. He turned off the light and packed it away the best he could remember before turning off all the lights and leaving the garage. He hoped that Jim would only think he had got the broom.