Ragged Man

by Ken Douglas

  My God, what had he become? What had he done? What was he doing? What was he going to do? Facing those awful eyes in the mirror, he screamed, for he was surely damned. Then he spun with the knife in his hand. He was about to lunge, about to finish it, but something stayed his hand. A little of piece of Sam Storm still survived. He wasn’t going to kill these kids.

  He screamed as pain racked his body and his eyes glowed red as the thing inside him willed him to attack, but he resisted, enduring the pain. Sam Storm had been no coward. He would not kill these children and he would harm their mother no more.

  He fought the evil, turning away from the bloody, naked woman.

  Christina saw a chance to attack, but something told her if she did, she’d die and her girls would die, too. She held back, gasping, filling her lungs with air, and watched as the battle raged inside of the man that had come to kill her.

  “ Take your children and go. Now,” the man whispered with his back to her. “Go and hide and don’t come back. If I live, I’ll find you.” Then he put his cock back in his pants and left the room as Christina fainted.

  J.P. heard the noise from upstairs. He didn’t need a program to know what was happening. Someone was hurting Christina and the twins. Probably killing them. Probably the same man that killed his dad and Sylvia, the same man who had been after them in the garage last night. Then the man was going to come downstairs and get him. The Ragged Man.

  He slipped out of bed and padded across the den to the closet. He opened the door and pushed aside the shoes. He knew from the two weeks he and his mom had spent with Christina over Christmas that there was a trap door in the closet that led under the house. He pushed aside old shoes and a vacuum cleaner and opened the trap door. Then he grabbed the cage holding Dark Dancer and entered the closet, closing the door after himself. In the dark, he slid through the square hole in the floor and pulled the trapdoor down over himself. Then he crawled on his belly across the cold dirt, pushing the cage in front, until he came to the foundation wall at the front of the house. He could see the street through a small mesh covered opening in the foundation. He hoped Rick would come soon.

  Storm thudded down the stairs, stopped when he reached the bottom, turned and fought the urge to go back up and finish the job. The pain was intense, his skin was on fire, his insides were ice. He took a step up and felt the pain ease. The message was clear, kill the woman and her daughters and the pain would cease. He took another step up. The pain stopped and a ripple of pleasure ran through him. He turned amid a flash of boiling cold and hopped down to the floor.

  He raised the knife, faced it inward and clasped it with both hands. There was one way to stop the pain, but before he could bring the knife down into his belly, the pain quit. Whatever wanted him to kill those little girls wanted him alive more.

  Pleasure zapped through his body again, the woman and girls out of his mind, but he had to find the boy. Holding the knife in his right hand, picking up his shoes with his left, he made his way into the downstairs bedroom and discovered that the boy wasn’t there.

  Again the pain came and Storm dropped both shoes and knife and started to tear the room apart. He ripped out dresser drawers and emptied their contents onto the floor, then he smashed the drawers into the two bedside lamps, breaking them and breaking the lamps. Not satisfied, he put his fist into the dresser mirror, shattering the glass, cutting himself and showering the dresser top and everything he touched with blood.

  It wasn’t long before J.P. heard heavy footsteps overhead. Loud. He held his breath and shivered. He was aware of his own heartbeat. He was scared. The footsteps stopped directly above him. Then he heard the front door open and he heard the footsteps stomp across the wooden porch. He peeked through the mesh opening and watched a big man cross the street to an older car that was parked under a street light.

  The man reached his car, turned and looked back at the house. He seemed to be looking directly into J.P.’s eyes. J.P. wanted to turn away from that stare, but he couldn’t. The big man was the same man who he had seen at the record meet the day before yesterday. The man who had killed his dad. The Ragged Man. For a second he thought he was going to come back and kill him, too. Then the man turned away, opened the car door, got in and drove away.

  “ Mom, wake up.”

  Christina opened her eyes. She must have passed out. Swell was washing the blood off of her stomach and Torry was wiping the blood from her lip.

  “ We heard what the man said, we gotta get outta here.”

  “ J.P.?” Christina said.

  “ He’s gone. The room’s a mess.” Swell said, trembling. It’s all covered in blood. We think the man killed him and took him away.”

  “ J.P. might still be in the house,” Christina said. “We have to look.”

  “ No, he’s not,” Torry said. “We checked.”

  Five minutes later Christina and the girls quietly left the house by the back door. J.P. was gone and her heart ached about that, but she had her girls, her car and plenty of money. She’d be in Mexico by morning, sipping margaritas with Susan.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Rick’s plane landed about the same time Sam Storm was slipping in through Christina Page’s dining room window.

  He was the first one off the plane, his only luggage, a little over twenty thousand dollars. Ten thousand, in hundreds, in each hip pocket and a wad of twenties in the right front. He moved through the concourse with a stiff stride, trying to work out the kinks and get his blood circulating as he headed for the taxi rank outside.

  He inhaled the night air as he passed the shuttle busses in favor of a more expensive, but much faster cab. It was a hot night and the jet and auto exhaust fumes made it seem all the more oppressive.

  “ Long Beach, The Beach Inn on Ocean. You know it?” he asked the first driver in the taxi rank, an elderly Vietnamese American.

  “ Like the back of your hand.”

  “ You don’t know the back of my hand.”

  “ I don’t know the way to the Beach Inn on Ocean either,” he said, smiling.

  “ You know the way to the Long Beach airport?” Rick smiled back at him. He liked the man’s sense of humor.

  “ Yes, sir.”

  “ I’ll direct you from there.”

  “ You got it,” the driver said. “Just settle back and relax.”

  Rick nodded and closed his eyes as the driver lurched the cab into the airport traffic. It wasn’t long before he drifted off and found the sleep he couldn’t get on the plane.

  What seemed like scant seconds, but was thirty-five minutes later, the driver reached over and shook Rick awake.

  “ Okay, Mister, I need you to guide me.”

  Rick knocked the fog from his head and looked out into the dark.

  “ Go straight down Lakewood Boulevard to the Traffic Circle, follow it around to Pacific Coast Highway and then take the first right and follow it all the way to the beach.”

  They drove the next five minutes in silence, until the driver stopped the cab in front of the Beach Inn.

  “ What room is Christina Page in?” Rick asked the underage boy behind the counter.

  “ Just a sec.” The kid punched keys as he stared at a computer screen. “Not here,” he said after a few seconds.

  “ You sure?”

  “ The computer doesn’t lie.”

  “ She was supposed to check in this afternoon.”

  “ That explains it. We’re full up. Been that way for a couple days.”

  “ Damn,” Rick said. “Thanks.” He left and walked down Ocean. He turned left on her street and walked the block to her house. He mounted the porch, rang the doorbell and waited. No answer. He tried the door and found it unlocked. He turned the knob and felt his stomach flutter. Something was wrong.

  The living room was small and connected to the dining room. Only the change in ceiling texture told the division between the two. He made his way through the rooms toward the light switch.

 
He swore as he banged into a coffee table. He stepped around it, moving between the table and a sofa, toward the switch. He flicked it and the two rooms lit up. Calling out Christina’s name, he went into the kitchen. He was worried. She wouldn’t go out and leave the front door unlocked. In the kitchen, everything appeared to be in order. He opened the refrigerator and checked the vegetable bin where she kept a plastic head of lettuce, stuffed with a another kind of green. If she’d gone to ground, the hidy hole would be empty. It was.

  He backed away from the refrigerator, glanced around the kitchen, looking for anything out of order and found nothing. He left the kitchen, moving toward the stairs. With trepidation he started up.

  Oh, God, the killer’s back, the thought rang through J.P. He lay on the cold dirt and covered his head with his hands. He heard footsteps overhead. Heard his heart beat. He tried to make himself small. The footsteps went away and a few minutes later they came back, running. They moved around the house, the killer was looking for him. Then the footsteps ran across the living room, out the door, and down the porch steps. He looked through the mesh grill and saw Rick. It wasn’t the killer, after all.

  “ Rick, it’s me!” he shouted and Rick stopped. He shouted again and Rick turned and started back. “I’m down here, under the house.”

  “ I’ll get you out, J.P.”

  “ I can do it.” He scurried on his belly, soldier-fashion, with the bird cage in front, instead of a rifle. Rick met him in the bedroom. The boy handed the cage up to Rick,

  “ Did he kill them, Rick? Did he kill them?” he asked as he took in the blood-stained mess.

  “ We have to get out of here.” Rick brushed damp dirt off the boy, then took him by the hand, led him through the house and out the front door. They walked quickly away from the house, not noticing the brown Ford Granada parked a half block down, on the other side of the street. They made a right at the corner. Rick looked over at the Beach Inn on the other side of the street, but kept going. If it was full a few minutes ago, it would be full now.

  “ Did he kill them?” J.P. asked again.

  “ I don’t know. Both the twin’s room upstairs and the downstairs bedroom were torn up and there was a lot of blood, but Christina and the girls were gone. Her money’s gone and so is her car. I think they got away.”

  “ But she wouldn’t have left me.”

  “ She would if she thought you were dead.”

  “ Oh.”

  “ We still have a big problem. Even if she got away, as soon as the cops see the house torn up and all the blood, they’re going to think I killed her and the girls.”

  “ What are we gonna do?”

  “ First we have to find a place for the night.”

  “ There.” J.P. pointed.

  Rick followed the boy’s finger with his eyes to the red neon vacancy sign of the Ocean View Motel. Neither man nor boy noticed the brown Ford round the corner after them and park.

  Crossing the threshold, Rick addressed the sleepy-eyed youth behind the counter.

  “ Can we have a room for the night?”

  “ Can have all you want, we’re mostly empty,” the boy was barely old enough to need a shave.

  “ They’re full across the street,” Rick nodded in the direction of the Beach Inn.

  “ They get the tour bus crowd.”

  “ They don’t come here?”

  “ We’re not quite up to their standards, but don’t tell the boss I said that.”

  “ Not a chance. You got a room with two beds?”

  “ Sure, sign in here.” The youth handed over a pen and the registration form. “You’re in twenty-four, go out the door to your left, you can’t miss it. TV works, we got cable, free coffee in the morning, you pay for the donuts.” He handed Rick a key.

  “ Thanks.” Rick took J.P. by the hand.

  “ The room is to the left, halfway down.”

  “ We’ll find it.”

  It was the moment Storm had been waiting for, the chance to go at Gordon. He clamped his left hand around the knife and started to open the door with his right and pain prickled his testicles. He let go of the door handle. Gordon wasn’t going to be as easy as the others. He wouldn’t be able to just walk in on him and attack him with his knife. Besides, he rationalized, he wanted him to suffer, to be humiliated, to know what it’s like to be scorned. He was going to need help.

  He started the car and went back to the woman’s house. He ran water over his bloody hand in the downstairs bathroom, then wrapped the cuts with bandages he found in a medicine cabinet. Once he was satisfied his hand looked as good as he could make it, he combed back his hair, washed his face and straightened his clothes.

  Time to get that help.

  The first thing Rick noticed after entering the room, was the odor of mildew. No, not first class, he thought, as he watched a cricket dart across the carpet. He followed it to the bathroom and gave the room a cursory inspection. He checked the window and decided it was too small for him to squeeze through.

  Turning, he faced the twin beds and studied the door that adjoined the next room. One of those doors that locked on each side. The cheap room had been designed so that it could be used as a two room suite. Mom and Dad in one, the kids in the other. When let as a single, the adjoining door remained locked.

  Next he turned his attention to the closet and eased the sliding door open.

  “ What are you looking for?” J.P. asked.

  “ I didn’t know till now, but I think found it.”

  “ What?”

  “ Look here.” He pointed to a trapdoor in the closet ceiling. “With any luck this connects to the other rooms.”

  “ Is that good?”

  “ Maybe, go bang on that door. I want to know if we have neighbors.”

  J.P. went over and knocked on the adjoining door.

  “ Again, louder this time.”

  J.P. knocked louder.

  “ Okay, we’re going to assume the room next door is vacant. We’re also going to assume there’s a trapdoor inside that closet, like this one. Do you think if I boosted you up, you could crawl through to the next room?”

  “ Yeah, I crawled under the house, didn’t I?”

  “ Good boy.” Rick had to admire his pluck. His father had been killed only two days ago. Tonight he barely missed getting killed himself and he was still holding it together. Most men would be a basket case in similar circumstances.

  “ Ready?”

  “ Ready,” J.P. responded.

  Rick opened the trap, revealing a black hole in the ceiling above.

  “ It’s dark up there,” J.P. said.

  “ You gonna be okay?”

  “ Yeah,” J.P. said.

  Rick scooped the boy up and lifted him into the dark. “Can you see anything?”

  “ Kinda.” J.P. peered into the darkness, there was just enough light coming through the open trapdoor from below to show him the way. “It’s scary up here.”

  “ Are you going to be okay?”

  “ I can do it.”

  J.P. squinted his eyes to try and see through the dark. He smelled dust and he felt it as his hands clutched onto the ceiling beams. He was going to have to stay on the beams as he worked his way to the room next door, because he’d learned, when the contractors had added a room on their house in Toronto, back when his parent were still together and his dad was still alive, that the drywall might not hold his weight.

  He balanced himself with his knees on adjacent beams and inched his way into the dark, toward the next room. He heard noises up ahead and stopped to listen. A rustling sound. He wanted to scurry backwards, but then he heard the chirping of baby birds and he sighed. There must be a hole in the roof, he thought, allowing the birds a way in to make their nests.

  He scooted a little closer to his goal. His right hand slid through a sticky spider web. He felt the creature scamper across his hand and he resisted the urge to scream.

  “ There’s spiders up here,” he w
hispered back to Rick and he started creeping along the beams once again. “I found it.” He pulled the trapdoor up through the ceiling.

  “ Good boy,” Rick whispered through the dark attic. “Can you jump down?”

  “ Sure,” J.P. whispered back. A few seconds later J.P. opened the connecting door with a smile on his face a block wide.

  “ Good work, J.P. You did good.”

  “ What are we gonna do now?”

  “ We’re going to move next door,” Rick said.

  “ Why?”

  “ Just a precaution. If someone comes looking for us, we won’t be here.”

  “ You think the Ragged Man’s gonna come?”

  “ No. I’m just being careful.”

  “ I think the man who killed my dad is him.”

  “ You mean the Ragged Man?”

  “ Yeah, him.”

  “ It’s just a story, J.P. Now come on.”

  Before entering the adjoining room, Rick went into the bath, took the clean towels off the rack and splashed water on them, before throwing them on the floor. Then he pulled down the bed covers on both beds and rumpled them to make it look as if they had been slept in.

  “ This way it’ll look like we’ve been and gone.”

  Then the two of them, J.P. carrying the birdcage, entered their new room and Rick closed both doors.

  “ Okay, J.P., we have to leave the lights out, no TV, no talking.”

  “ I understand. We’re hiding, right?”

  “ Right.”

  They found their respective beds in the dark. They didn’t undress. They lay on top of the covers, each lost in his own thoughts, staring at the dark ceiling.

  J.P. thought about the big man and his steel gray stare. Then he thought about the Ghost Dog and he started to shiver. His shivering increased when he heard the rapping on the door of the room they had just vacated. He looked at Rick and saw that he held his index finger to his lips, telling him to be silent. He didn’t need to be told, he knew who was next door.