Whisper Lake (The Turning Book 2)

by Micky Neilson

  ***

  Long before Celine entered Jason's life, when he was thirteen years old, his first crush was Annie Brooke. Her parents' property bordered the Emblocks' and Annie would often sneak over late at night, rap on Jason's window, come into his room, and the two of them would make out.

  Making out had eventually led to heavy petting, and they had planned on taking things further—They had decided that they would go all the way after a vacation Annie's father planned. And they would have, if not for the freak accident…

  Annie's house had a narrow, winding stairway that reminded Jason of something out of an Alfred Hitchcock movie. On the fateful night, the way Jason later heard it, Annie had been hurrying to dinner. She had rushed from her room, and onto the stairs just as the family dog came running up. Annie had lost her footing and tumbled, head over heels, her body twisting and contorting. Her neck had snapped and rumors circulated that when Annie's body had reached the bottom of the stairs, her head had spun around a full one hundred and eighty degrees.

  Jason was only vaguely aware of this recollection, of these musings as he was ripped once more from the void to awaken in his room. His TV was on but the screen was just static, bathing everything in pale light and white noise. Disturbing memories of the old car ("I is a college student!) and the strange man lingered. It had been a terrible nightmare, that was all.

  But it wasn't a dream, or even a nightmare, not exactly.

  He sat up, swung his feet off the bed, and looked down at his thirteen-year-old body.

  This isn't right. You're not in your room, you're in the ground.

  But this was his room: nightstand, bed against the poster-covered wall, his cardboard standup of Elvira in the corner, window, curtains closed, his dresser with 13" TV and VCR on top, and closet. Both his room and closet door were closed. Outside, the wind was howling over the static of the television. He ran his hands down his legs. It feels real.

  It can't be.

  There was a new noise then. It sounded like tapping from behind the curtains of his window. Jason hesitated. The sound came again, louder this time.

  Jason stood and walked over to the window, placed his hands on both sides and leaned in. "Hello?" He asked, staring at the gray curtain.

  "Jason, it's me…"

  "Annie?"

  Annie's dead.

  If this is a dream then she can be alive. Anything can happen in dreams.

  "Jason it's me, let me see you."

  Don't open that curtain.

  The wind gusted. Jason reached up and pulled the curtain aside…

  And there she was. Annie, just as beautiful as he had remembered her. Long, gorgeous black hair, wide brown eyes…

  "Is it you…?"

  She smiled. "Of course it's me, numb-nut, who else would it be?"

  Excitedly, Jason reached for the latch. As he did, he looked closer at Annie's eyes.

  Something was off. Something in those eyes… pinpricks of light, like distant stars, like the glints he had seen in the eyes of the Buick driver. Jason's hand hovered.

  Annie's expression changed, grew more serious. "You can have me. You can have anything you want. I will transport you to such heights… transcendence awaits. All you have to do… is let me in."

  "No," Jason said, shaking his head. "You're not you. This isn't right. None of this is right…." He withdrew his hand. Annie bared her teeth, yellow and pointed like a saw blade.

  She slammed her hands against the glass hard enough to make it shake. "Let me in!" Jason flinched…

  When he opened his eyes, he was back in the Buick. The light outside had waned; the streaking clouds above were painted in the crimson hue of the dying sun.

  The driver was bathed in the same light, the blood-shot sky reflected in his glasses. More patches of skin had fallen away, revealing open sores the size of quarters. When he spoke, his dry lips seeped blood through the cracks. "You should not refute her wishes."

  "Who?" Jason asked. In his hand was another bottle of Divine Essence. Once again full, the cap removed. He wanted to drink, more than anything.

  "The Goddess of Goddesses, the Bestower of Strength."

  "The Lady of Sorrow?" Jason asked, remembering his dream of Death Highway.

  The driver turned away. "Yes, that as well."

  The Far-Reaching One is bound by the Lady of Sorrow. That was what Serrano had said.

  "What about the Far-Reaching One? Who is that?"

  The man was silent for a long moment. Finally, he said, "Time is wasting. You must make your choice."

  "Tell her I refuse," Jason replied, scowling. "If that means I die, then I'll die."

  "Why die," the driver asked. "When you have not yet truly lived?" Jason looked down once more at the bottle. Just pour it out. Yes, he wanted to, but he couldn't bring himself to do it… not just yet.

  The old car rattled on.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Sheriff Barclay had been sitting outside the kid's apartment when he got the call. Another woman had been beaten, this time outside the local laundromat. Concussion, three cracked ribs, broken jaw, even worse than what Celine had gone through.

  The attack happened a little after eight p.m. There had been nothing in the way of evidence at the scene, and no eyewitnesses. The victim, Mattie Hearn, had been taken to the same hospital where Celine had been admitted following her attack. Ty had stopped by to check on Mattie and was told that she was awake and responsive.

  The sheriff waited now at her bedside. The left side of the woman's face resembled an eggplant. Her jaw was wired shut. Ty reached out and held Mattie's hand. "I just want to ask you a couple questions, while you're awake if that's alright," he began. "Just squeeze my hand once for yes, and two for no, okay?" The woman gave his hand a short squeeze.

  "The man who attacked you, did you see his face?"

  Two squeezes. No. Mattie brought her right hand up and made a motion over her face, covering it.

  "A mask?" One squeeze. Yes. "A black ski mask?"

  Yes. Yes.

  "Blue eyes?" The sheriff asked.

  Yes.

  Ty nodded. "Mattie is there anything else you saw that could help identify this person?"

  No.

  "Okay then. One last question… do you know of anyone who may have wanted to hurt you?"

  No.

  With his free hand he embraced hers. "I'll look in on you again, promise. Rest up, and enjoy the free drugs." The corner of Mattie's lip lifted ever so slightly.

  Lieutenant Embury radioed Ty as he drove back to Whisper Lake, informing him that Doc Keen wanted to talk to him, and only him.

  Twenty minutes later, the sheriff was following Doc Keen into his small, wood-paneled office. Keen sat down and when he looked across the desk his eyes were bulging more than normal, and the bags underneath them were fully packed.

  Ty picked up an anatomy model, and apologized when the plastic intestines came tumbling out.

  "You and I go way back…" the Doc began. The sheriff placed the disemboweled model back on the desk. "This violates patient/client confidentiality but I want you to catch this son of a bitch…"

  "You got my undivided attention."

  Keen leaned forward, eyebrows raised. "Mattie came to me for a procedure three days ago…" the Doc hesitated.

  "What kind of procedure?" Ty asked, but he was pretty sure he already knew.

  "An abortion," Keen confirmed.

  Ty clucked his tongue. "Those bomb threats, you said the caller accused you of murder." The Doc nodded. "Seems obvious but I have to ask: anyone outside of you and your employees have access to your files? Anyone break in recently?"

  Keen shook his head. "Mattie could have told friends, family, who knows. You'll have to ask her."

  The sheriff fixed his gaze on Keen. "You opened this door so I'm going to ask you something else: did Celine have the procedure as well, before her attack?"

  The doc hesitated. "Not… anytime recently. Or if so, she didn't come to me."<
br />
  The sheriff frowned. "Recently?"

  Keen returned Ty's even gaze. "She came to me years ago. When she was seventeen."

  ***

  It was round about midnight when Celine showed up at the kid's door, hands stuffed in her coat pockets.

  She had remembered the note he showed her, with the Royal Lodge's name on it, and the number 300 was easy to remember. A few seconds after she knocked, the disheveled-looking boy opened the door a crack and peeked out. His eyes nearly popped out of his head. "Holy shit, it's you."

  "Can I come in? It's cold out." Celine said. Beneath her coat she was still wearing her work uniform.

  "One sec." He closed the door. Celine waited. Thirty seconds later, he came back and opened the door all the way. He was wearing a Rush concert t-shirt from their Presto tour, and boxers with a roughly six-inch protrusion poking against the cotton. The kid was red-faced, his mouth a horizontal line, lips drawn in. He said "I was just, uh, um…"

  Celine walked in and looked around. The kitchen counter was stacked with at least six different kinds of Rubik's Cubes. Celine didn't even know that many existed. The main room was filled with barrels of chemicals and what looked like lab-style equipment: a microscope, burners, beakers, tubing, a few machines or devices that Celine couldn't begin to guess the purpose of, and what looked like a centrifuge. All of this was spread haphazardly through the main living area and kitchen. The only clear spots were the couch itself, and the space between it and the television.

  Beneath the couch Celine could see the corner of a magazine. She walked over to it and pulled the magazine out with her toe, revealing the latest issue of MILK JUGGS. The woman on the cover was thick, with enormous tits and stars over her nipples.

  The kid's woody was now non-existent, but his face was redder than ever. "That might be property of the previous—"

  "Yeah," Celine said. "I don't care. What's your name?"

  The kid straightened a bit. "Ghost."

  Celine sighed and rolled her eyes. "Look I know you're working with CJ. Something's happened to my boyfriend and I want to know if that dickhead's behind it."

  Ghost slumped. He wouldn't meet her eyes as he replied "I just started, you know, I can't be—"

  She walked over to the kid. She had a good two inches on him so she was looking down when she said "You're afraid of Boil, I get it. I only want CJ." Her right hand jabbed a finger in his direction. "If you know something, and you don't speak up, I'll go visit my friend Sheriff Barclay and let him know about all this shit you got in your apartment. Then you'll have the cops and Boil to stress over."

  A wounded look crossed the kid's features. She didn't know if he was really dangerous. He sure didn't seem like it. Anyway, she was betting she could take him if he did anything stupid… which he didn't. He simply stared at her tits as he answered the question. "There's this guy Carter, kind of a fucking gorilla. Him and CJ told Boil this morning that their problem was solved. Then CJ and Carter started arguing about a shovel…"

  Celine's heart sank.

  "CJ said it was 'still in the truck.' Carter said it was his problem to take care of and then Boil told them to shut the fuck up." Ghost shrugged.

  Emotions warred inside Celine. Without another word, she shouldered past Ghost, fled out the door, and sat in her Jeep, crying and smoking for twenty minutes straight.

  I'm too late. He's dead.

  You don't know that.

  But she would know. One way or another, she would find out.

  ***

  Jason was trapped in the darkness, trapped with the monsters.

  He was nine years old, screaming for Mom to let him out, pounding against the wood. The closet smelled of age and dust and dirty clothes. There was a sliver of light under the door; a sound of footsteps. A shadow. The voice that came from the other side was the voice of his Mother, and yet it wasn't. There was an undercurrent to it—dark, deep, and terrifying.

  You're dreaming—or whatever it is, again.

  "You need not fear the monsters," that voice said. "Pledge me your fealty and fear no man or monster ever again. Accept me as your own and be made whole."

  Jason rocked back against the wall, pressing his knees to his chest, hiding his face with eyes squeezed shut, crying, crying…

  "It is already within you to kill…"

  "I said no," Jason replied in a voice that sounded weak and pathetic. There was silence from the other side, and then the sound of nails being dragged down the wood. Jason trembled. "I said no, now leave me alone." He shook uncontrollably as the tears came. "Leave me alone! LEAVE ME ALONE!!!"

  ***

  Celine had stayed up at the kitchen table until nearly 3 AM drawing a map, at the center of which was Boil Trucking. CJ had told Boil and the other guy Carter that the shovel was still in his truck. They had said it was his problem. If CJ had been that freaked out over the shovel, she really didn't think he'd keep it. She also didn't think he was clever enough to get rid of it so that it couldn't be found. So, she had marked every location within a ten mile radius of the trucking company, any place she could think of where CJ could stop and easily ditch the shovel. Specifically, she marked any business that had a dumpster out back.

  And then she had slept, and dreamed. She had been lost in a thick fog. Jason's voice carried through the mist, coming from nowhere and everywhere at once. The more Celine searched, the more she ran, the thicker the fog became, and the more distant Jason's voice grew.

  She had awakened to sunlight pouring through the trailer windows, and she remembered the dream… not a nightmare exactly. Celine believed in the power of dreams, a way for our subconscious to send us messages—warnings, but sometimes guidance as well. Deep, deep inside, despite all evidence to the contrary, Celine still believed she was not too late to save Jason.

  And so she had set out and to conduct her search, from one dumpster to another, prepared to spend all day if necessary. She called in sick, sad to leave Burt in the lurch but determined to see this through. Wearing gloves and her scummiest clothes she picked through the filth and suffered the stench, wondering several times if this was all just a very stupid idea…

  Then just before nine thirty, on her tenth stop, in a dumpster behind the Shop N Save, she had found it: a wood-handled shovel with a worn, pointed blade on it and… a few small clumps of dried dirt.

  That was it: it had to be. Once she got over the shock of actually having uncovered the shovel, she had considered taking it to Ty, trying to convince him that it was evidence, and waiting endlessly for the wheels of justice to squeak along. That was what she had planned to do. But, after seeing Ghost's apartment she thought there might be a better way…

  Which was how she found herself standing outside Ghost's door, holding a baggy filled with dirt.

  "Whatever it is, the answer is 'Hell no,'" the kid said. He was standing in the doorway, wearing rubber gloves, long shorts, and a Genesis Invisible Touch t-shirt. "I risked my life helping you last time, girl!" He sniffed and said "Why do you smell like a hobo?"

  Celine stuck the baggy of dirt up to his face. He pulled his head back. "This came off the shovel CJ was talking about. Look, I read a lot of true crime. That equipment you've got, you could use it to look at this, right? In one of my books they used the dirt under someone's fingernails to figure out that the body had been moved from—"

  "You need to bounce," Ghost said and started to shut the door. Celine stopped it with her foot. "I'm not taking no for an answer," she said.

  The kid's voice went up an octave. "I can get killed for this shit, okay? Roll on outta here."

  "Gimme your hand," Celine said.

  "What?"

  "Take the glove off and give me your hand."

  Tentatively, the kid pulled off the rubber glove from his right hand and stuck it out. Celine grabbed it and pulled it to her left breast. A startled sound escaped Ghost's mouth.

  "Have you ever even felt a real tit before?" Celine asked.

  "Aaah, C
hrist, you're killin' me." A dream-stricken look had come over his features.

  Celine looked down to see that the kid had immediately sprouted a boner. She pulled his hand away. "You need to look at this and tell me if there's anything that would show where the shovel was used. You do that and I'll show these to you." She grabbed her left tit.

  The kid sighed, thought about it for all of three seconds and said: "Okay but you can't come back here. Give me a few hours and I'll see what I can do. Where can I meet you?"

  ***

  Three hours later Celine had showered, put on clean clothes and was ready to go back to the kid's apartment when a knock came at the trailer door.

  "Got it, Mom," Celine said. She opened the door to find the kid, once again in his hoodie and jeans, standing on the other side. "What did you find out," she asked.

  "Hey, we had a deal. I walked four miles." The kid still had plenty of energy, if the bulge in his jeans was any indication. He must have been anticipating the show. Celine called over her shoulder "I'll be back Mom." She grabbed her coat off the hook and motioned for Ghost to get moving.

  Two minutes later they were driving down an old back road, Celine hanging a cigarette out the window. The sun was just now falling to the horizon; a lazy fog had begun slithering through the trees. "What do you do for Boil, anyway?" Celine asked. "Cook meth?" The kid laughed. "Any dickhead can cook meth," he said.

  "So, what do you do?"

  "Hey, I'll give you the dirt on the dirt, but that's it. And I'm only doin' that because you're fucking smo-o-okin' hot."

  Celine pulled the Jeep off of the road, behind a stand of pine trees and brought it to a stop. "Okay, talk," she said. The kid motioned toward her chest. Celine sighed, put the cig in her mouth, pulled the coat open, and yanked her shirt and bra up over her tits, which bobbled up and down. The kid gawked. Then he simply stared at them— first with amazement, then like a wolf eyeballing a sheep. She half expected him to start licking his lips. "Jesus Christ on a popsicle stick they're gorgeous," he said as he grabbed his bulging crotch "Can I—"