Rainy Fall

by Claudio Hernández

  They were sleeping soundly while Peter was telling his father what had happened when he touched Kaylee.

  20

  “This time it was different. I could see inside her but I also felt the pain inside my body and the tobacco smell. It was the killer’s breath. This had never happened to me before. I think I am going nuts. How far will I go?

  “Maybe you will predict the future” John joked.

  Peter showed a hint of a smile and looked at him.

  “That’s science fiction.”

  “Yes, of course, that’s why I have asked you. I know you, you are my son, and I always thought that shine of yours would go further. But I thought that you’d just see things by touching any object.” John raised his bony hand in the air drawing an arch, simulating something that stretches.

  “What do you mean seeing things by touching an object? That sounds nice, but it is also fiction.” Peter said, touching his glasses.

  “The shine is fiction too” His father argued, lolling on the couch.

  “No, it’s not; it happens to many people. It is called telepathy. They can see inside a person from far away. Russian army trained this type of men. They had them locked inside a room and they would discover their enemy’s decisions, only with their minds. There were many experiments... I don’t really know if it has happened here too, but it wouldn’t be surprised.”

  “That doesn’t sound credible, son” his father said gently while touching his right shoulder.

  “I read that in the Internet” Peter announced, snuggling up against his father’s body.

  “You read too much” His father said smiling at him and caressing his hair.

  “But back to the conversation we were having before” Peter stared at his father, raising his head like a duck. “I have felt the pain when I have touched you. Can you endure it?

  “Bah!” He exclaimed, shaking his head.

  “Promise me just one more thing, dad, to finish with this...”

  “What is it, son?”

  “You will go to the doctor and have it examined tomorrow.”

  “Ok.” John’s voice did not sound too confident.

  “Promise me?”

  John nodded again like a spring head doll.

  “Ok. I promise” he said, but he was lying.

  21

  Mathew came in slamming the door open so impetuously that it hit the glass door. The glass cracked like a spider web. They saw him popping his bald head in while a lot of water was coming through the doorway and the moving air made two or three sheets fly out. One of the sheets fell on the police station counter.

  “My daughter hasn’t come back home since last night!” the man shouted with haggard eyes.

  Burt heard him from his office through the glass door. He was having a cup of coffee, with his feet on his desk and the felt hat on his head.

  Lloyd Chambers was behind the counter right then, leaning against it on his elbows. His eyes widened a little, but he stood there like a statue with a blank stare.

  Finally, the man came so close to him that he could smell his morning breath, which made Lloyd rouse up from his slumber.

  “Calm down, sir, it’s all right...”

  “It’s all right?” Mathew interrupted, slamming his fist down on the counter and making a pen jump and it fell down on the floor. Behind him the door slammed shut.

  “Make your claim here, sir...” Lloyd said in a tremulous voice, raising a form with trembling hands.

  The man was enraged. He threw the form with a wipe of his hand.

  “Is this all you can do? There is a killer out there!” he pointed towards the door. “And my daughter hasn’t come back home!”

  “Calm down, sir” Jack intervened with a grave expression and pulling his pants up to his navel.

  “Are you telling me to calm down? You are useless!” Mathew was shouting, his bald head sweating.

  Burt put his feet down arching his eyebrows, and then he left the coffee on the desk. He walked slowly towards the door, and opened it with the same procrastination.

  “What the hell is going on here?” Burt asked with his deep voice, although he had heard everything.

  Mathew relaxed immediately.

  “Sheriff, you have to search for my daughter. She did not come back home yesterday. And I’ve heard the murderer is back.”

  “That killer died. This is a copycat, he is imitating him. Maybe he has just done it once or twice and he doesn’t murder any more girls. It wouldn’t make any sense to keep on doing it. Sometimes there are paranoiac...”

  Suddenly the phone started ringing. Richard picked up the phone and his jaw dropped while his eyes opened wide.

  Burt stole a glance at him.

  Mathew started shaking.

  He had a bad feeling.

  22

  John did not go to the doctor that morning; therefore he had failed to keep his promise. He was sitting on the couch instead, watching Channel Four. Christie reported worrying news.

  Peter was frying some eggs and bacon in the kitchen when his mobile telephone rang in his raincoat pocket. He was wearing it inside his house!

  His father started shouting something from the sitting room.

  But Peter had already the phone near his ear. He had seen who was calling. It was Burt.

  And the bad omen turned out to be real.

  23

  Mathew was crying like a child leaning on the counter. He was striking it with his fists, his head down.

  “You must come with us. We need you to identify her, sir.” Martin explained holding his arm gently, without pressing too hard. The man was being guided like a little boy whose pet has just died.

  “Everybody knows her. We all know each other here.” The man kept saying without looking up, dragging his feet. “I am sure she is my little girl.”

  “They might be confused” Martin tried to encourage him.

  “I’m sure she is my daughter. He has just said Hannah O’Connor, Mathew’s daughter.”

  Burt put his jacket on and he made a signal to his men with his index finger. All of them knew what he meant.

  They walked out the door together under the rain with serious expressions. When they got into the two patrol cars, they turned on the blue, red and yellow lights in that rainy fall morning, heading the municipal water tank, where Owen, the head of maintenance, was waiting for them.

  24

  They made a short stop to pick Peter up. He got into the vehicle. He was soaking wet, and all of them, Richard, Matthew and Peter held an absolute silence all the way down there, feeling their hearts hammering inside their chests.

  25

  He saw the Ford and he saw them. The FBI agents, Mulder and Scally, Burt thought, and then he was overcome by an anger he could not hide. He turned right, three feet away from them who were standing next to Owen and a couple of workers, and he put on the brakes suddenly, making the wheels skid on the mud.

  Jack’s vehicle stopped silently.

  Then the car doors could be heard opening and closing, and Burt mumbled something under his big moustache.

  “Good morning” Ethan said looking at Burt blatantly, with a goofy grin on his face.

  “Fuck off” Burt said when he walked past him.

  “What?” Ethan had not heard him.

  Charlotte had heard him, but she did not say anything. Her hair was again wet because of the ceaseless rain in that unforgettable fall.

  Burt forced his way between them towards Owen, who was a man with a heavy beard and long white hair. He was approaching retirement age, but he did not want to retire. Besides, he was in a good shape. He was covering from the rain with a dark raincoat. Burt was wearing his Day-Glo transparent raincoat. The rain was beating on something plastic, and it made a recognizable sound: Rain falling on an umbrella.

  “Hi, Owen” Burt extended his hand with his palm open. Owen shook hands with a sad look.

  “Hi, Burt; I’m afraid I have bad news” Owen said moving his
head. His hair was wet. His raincoat had a hood and Burt wondered why on earth he wasn’t wearing it.

  “Where is she, Owen?” Burt asked with a heavy heart.

  Owen pointed towards the water tank next to him that looked like a huge cube on four concrete bases. They could have been wooden, but there were thousands of tons of water there and concrete supports more weight. Burt looked up to the upper part of the tank. There was a ladder that allowed them to go up.

  “She is in there” Owen said while dropping his right index finger. “The control system detected a problem with the general outlet, so I assumed that there would be clothes or something like that obstructing it. You know” Owen shrugged and then he kept on explaining. “There are many hoodlums in this town. But when I went up to see what was going on and I opened the storm door, I found her. Firstly I only saw a blurry spot, right on the main pipe outlet. But when my men went up with the longest sticks we had and they managed to move that pinky thing that was on the bottom, we noticed that the water was turning red. We were shocked to find that she was a young girl. She was naked and she was bleeding from her private parts. I didn’t look right there, but I saw her wrinkled face and I knew who she was. Then I called you.”

  “We have to get her out from there. We are going to seal this facility for some time. We will need to investigate thoroughly. Meanwhile, people can drink and have a shower under the rain.

  Owen nodded.

  “She is Hanna, this man’s daughter.” He pointed towards Matthew. “I have no doubts.”

  Matthew threw his hands up in horror, trying to pluck his hair. But he had no hair at all, so he tore his head with his nails instead, causing a couple of blood drops to flow, but the rain made it seem that he had cut his head open.

  “Tell me he is wrong!” Mathew howled desperately.

  Jack patted him on his back and the man suddenly burst into tears, stooping over.

  “Has anybody else gone up there, apart from you?” Burt wanted to know, while getting closer to the water tank. He was really asking if Ethan and Charlotte had gone up.

  “If you are referring to me, no, I haven’t gone up, although I could have done it. I have just made a few questions to this good man.” Ethan said, with his head soaking wet.

  “Spare your words” Burt barked, placing one foot on the first step of the metallic ladder, as if it was the last thing he was going to do in his life.

  Ethan did not answer and Charlotte stared at him incredulously.

  “Be careful, sheriff” Owen said with a worried expression.

  “I have been trained to use this kind of ladders, believe me, Owen.” His right foot started going up. Gradually, under the watchful eye of all of them, Burt started going towards the top of the tank, like a spider going up to the ceiling. Two minutes later he had reached the end of the ladder, and he was gasping. It had been so long since he had done something like that, despite he had bluffed about it. He looked at the palms of his hands and he saw they were red. Then, he glanced at the sky as if the answer was there, and looked at the open hatch. Indeed, she was there, floating like a rag abandoned to its fate. She was lying face down, sunk in the water, and her hair was floating. Burt bent forward and extended his hand. The sensation was like touching a huge worm, she was soggy and swollen. Her naked skin was wrinkled but it maintained its pink and pale color. His fingers touched the floating girl’s shoulder. He pushed her, then he pulled her and finally he turned her around to see her swollen face.

  “You are right, Owen. She is Hannah.”

  Suddenly, Matthew threw himself to the floor like a child and his tears filled with mud, then they got mixed with the sludge and the rainwater. His heart was hammering like a burning mallet and he felt a stabbing pain in his chest. Charlotte bent down to caress his bald head, but it wasn’t helpful now.

  “I told you, sheriff. I could recognize her as soon as I saw her. This town is small and we all know each other.” Owen assured with his gaze on the top of the tank, watching Burt’s figure.

  “We have to get her out from here” Burt said with a disgusted face. That was one of those moments when he wished he could drink a box of beers and forget everything. The nightmare was repeating. But he had Peter.

  Then, Owen’s men climbed up the ladder.

  26

  John had been waiting quite a long time for Christie to appear on the news. John knew what was going on because his son had told him where he was going and why. Thus, John had no hope of learning much by watching Channel Four. It had happened half an hour before, that was enough time to spread the word all around. It was more cautious to remain calm and keep the journalists away. Only John and Matthew’s family knew about it. Well, John wasn’t sure what her family knew about it, but when a police officer comes home and picks you up, something bad has happened. That reaffirmed him in the idea that many people knew about it already.

  Hanna O’Connor had been found dead.

  After the other two girls, after the cold winter they had just had, it all pointed in one direction.

  The killer had started striking again, and it didn’t look like he was going to stop.

  Then, suddenly, the doorbell rang. John turned his gaze to the door, which was on the left of the couch, only five yards away.

  And he saw the shape of a person through the door glass.

  27

  It took them more than twenty minutes to take her out of the tank and leave her face up on the mud, next to his father’s fists, who had identified his daughter. Moving her from the inside of the tank was a chaotic task. It was really hard for Burt and the two workers to take the naked body down from there, as it was slippery like a fish. Her skin, even though it was all wrinkled, seemed to be too elusive under the heavy rain. It was Burt himself who held her on his left shoulder, grabbing her tightly with his powerful fingers, which were like hooks in those moments. He went down each step gasping, trying to maintain his balance with the only help of his right hand, holding onto the handrail of the ladder, as the tentacles of an octopus. Owen had had the great idea of tying a rope round Burt’s waist, which would be tensed by one of his workers who was above him. If he slipped, both of them would fall down, but luckily it did not happen.

  She was naked, her breasts did not have nipples, and there were no fingerprints on her neck or her arms, as Ethan asked without much success. Her private parts had been ripped off and were bleeding. Burt’s raincoat was full of a bright red blood that seemed to glow within 100 yards of the place.

  “Poor girl” Burt murmured while watching her trying to find a possible track. The rain was still falling heavily and Hanna’s naked body was soggy and pale. Her lips were purplish and her eyes, which were permanently open, were fixed on the sky.

  They were all around her, looking at her with sadness and anger, everyone but Ethan and Charlotte, who had taken out a notepad and were writing continuously. The rain smudged the ink, and Ethan complained:

  “Fuck, I can’t work like this!”

  Nobody paid him any attention.

  Then Peter kneeled down in the mud. He put on his glasses and he reached out his right hand toward her with a serious expression, before the attentive gaze of all of those present. His fingertips were dry, and he touched her wet and cold skin with them. He did not feel anything at first, except anger, but soon it changed. The light started fading before his eyes, and everything became dark. It was an increasing darkness, until everything turned pitch black. An instant later the light came, as if it was coming from a pipe. It started like an equidistant point, and then it became as big as a window frame, until he could see the white mask with two holes showing two dark sinister eyes, full of insanity and evil. It was dark, or at least there was not much light and he could not see the color of his eyes or the clenched teeth behind the mask. He heard a sound. It made Peter’s heart race until it interfered with the communication. Now he could hear the killer’s heavy breathing, and how he was gasping. He was whispering inaudible things for him.
It was raining. The umbrella had fallen to the side, and it had been blown away by the strong wind. The killer was looking at the umbrella. Peter was puzzled, he did not really know if he was inside the killer or the girl. He became really pale and Burt was alarmed to see his face.

  “What is going on Peter?” Burt asked with a soft voice, as if he was his psychologist.

  “I don’t know if I am looking through the killer’s eyes or the girl’s eyes. I don’t know for sure.” The trance seemed to start zooming off, but Peter squeezed strongly the girl’s hand to avoid the disconnection. “Now I can hear them too.”

  The next minute he remained silent.

  Peter felt the girl’s fear inside him. A fear that made her heart beat faster and that was making her body sweat under the rain, while she was kicking and moving your arms. But he was much stronger than her and he was grabbing her wrists to immobilize her easily. She did not feel any pain in her wrists, because the killer’s gloves were resilient and soft at the same time, like a sponge, so as not to leave any print. He could smell the killer’s breathing again. He had smoked at least a whole cigarette box minutes before. His breath reeked of tobacco and Hanna hated that smell. Peter could feel and sense it.

  Then he grabbed the big metal cross, which was shining as the blades of a knife. She wanted to shout, but he covered her mouth. There was no air, he could not breathe. Then he heard perfectly clear:

  “No, no, no. You have to feel the worldly pleasure first. You can’t die now, just like that.”

  It was a familiar voice, but he did not know where he had heard it before. The trance was being longer than usual, because this time he was seeing and feeling many more things. Then, suddenly, he felt a stabbing pain in his lower abdomen. It was Hanna’s pain. It was Kaylee’s pain. And then, he felt the warm and soft liquid coming out from her like menstruation. And, again, he saw something that puzzled him: Rainwater dying red. He did not know if that vision came from the killer’s eyes or the girl’s eyes. He thought for an instant that Hannah could not move her head and it was impossible for her to see her own blood while the killer was penetrating her over and over with the cross. She should have been able to raise her head. But then he felt a pain that was much worse than the others. It was so bad that he had to put a hand to his belly and then to his chest. The killer had big scissors, and he was cutting her nipples with them. Peter felt really sick and then he pulled away his hand suddenly, much to Burt and his men’s astonishment. Meanwhile, Ethan had been writing some blurry sentences on his notebook. He was holding a recorder and he was recording everything.