by Rick Jones
“Four, maybe five days. It all depends on her. And she’s probably one of the worst cases I’ve seen come through here in a long time.”
“Cooch wants her working the streets by next week.”
“Probably not going to happen. But she’ll be well enough to answer your questions by then.”
Becki continued to scream, her voice muted behind the metal door.
“Cooch ain’t gonna like me coming back without answers. Means whoever is doing this will keep on coming.”
“Let him come,” said the Casually-Dressed Man. “Cooch will be ready for him next time.”
“Yeah,” was all the Well-Dressed Man said.
When the Well-Dressed Man left the basement and fell behind the steering wheel of his car, he couldn’t believe that a human being was capable of producing such stench. It was like malignant waves of the woman’s corruption just wafting from her carcass looking for another soul to eclipse. It was definitely palpable and seemingly alive.
Starting the vehicle, the man headed back to Cooch’s estate. Of course Cooch wouldn’t like what he had to say. But the Casually-Dressed Man was right about one thing: Cooch would be ready for him now.
But he’d be wrong.
Because something very wicked and unstoppable was about to come their way.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
“Woman, I’m headin’ off to the store to get me a six-pack for tomorrow’s game. Should you be wantin’ something while I’m there?”
“God forbid should you go without a six-pack during a game,” Kimball’s mother stated.
“Now don’t you go sassing me now, woman. You want something or not?”
“We need some flour,” she responded.
“Some beer and some flour. Gotcha. Be back in a few.”
From her position in the upstairs bathroom she could hear the front door close and the deadbolt being drawn into place, locking the door.
#
When Kimball’s old man left the house the two men inside the SUV watched him walk away in the opposite direction.
Beef-Neck checked his suppressor-tipped firearm, then returned it to his shoulder holster. From his position he could see the outline of a woman on the second floor through the window. Kimball was nowhere to be seen.
“All right,” Beef-Neck said. “You cut the phone lines. I’ll work the lock.”
“Now you wanna go in?”
Beef-Neck pointed to the old man, who was walking away. “The numbers are in our favor, huh? And besides,” he looked at the second-story window and saw the woman, “I have a much better idea.”
Without saying anything further, they exited the vehicle and headed towards the house.
#
Less than five minutes later she heard the door open, then close, the sound quieter than normal.
“Kimball?”
Silence.
She went to the head of the stairway and looked down. “Kimball, is that you?”
Then there was the sound of glass breaking, like the glass from a picture frame.
“Who’s down there?”
Then the lights to the downstairs living room went out, plunging that half of the house into darkness. Then the kitchen lights went out. Now the entire first-floor landing was steeped in blackness.
“Who’s down there?”
Nothing.
Then she hollered, sounding panicked. “Who’s there?”
There were footsteps moving across the floor, the footfalls heavy with no obvious intent at subtlety. Whoever was down there wanted her to know that she was not alone.
“I’m calling the police!”
A black mass stood at the base of the stairway looking up, something that was silhouetted against the backdrop, something that was blacker than black. Then a second shadow joined the first, a shape that was just as dark.
Slowly, an arm projected from the wall of darkness with a photo of Kimball in his hand, obviously one he had appropriated from a frame on the nightstand in the living room. “The boy,” the shape said. “He’s not here, is he?”
She turned and raced down the hallway, closing off her bedroom door. She could hear heavy footfalls climbing the steps, then racing down the hallway, coming to her door. She picked up the phone, put it to her ear. The line was dead. Not even a drone. Then she dropped the receiver.
“Get away! I’m calling the police!”
The bedroom door swung wide on protesting hinges. “I hardly doubt that,” said Beef-Neck, who walked into the room as if he owned the place. “At least not when the line’s been cut.”
She recognized him immediately. The man at the cemetery---the one Kimball confronted and brought to his knees---and openly embarrassed him.
“What do you want?” she asked him, her voice trembling.
“Where’s the kid?”
“He’s not here.”
Beef-Neck crossed the room, grabbed her by her hair, and drew her close enough so he could whisper in her ear. “You remember me, don’t you? I remember you. I remember him.” He held up the photo of Kimball before her eyes.
She struggled weakly against his hold. “Please don’t hurt me,” she cried.
“Hurt you?” He appeared to put on an air of sympathy, then he caressed her face with a sweep of his hand. “I would never do anything to hurt a fine woman like you, one who is obviously a church-going, God-fearing---by all the religious things you got hanging on the walls downstairs ---person. I would never do anything as low as that.”
The second man sniggered.
“Please, I’m begging you. Don’t hurt my son.”
Beef-Neck nodded. “It doesn’t matter,” he told her, maintaining that tone of false sympathy. “I got plans all the same.”
Her eyes widened to the size of communion wafers. “What are you going to do?”
He began to usher her toward the doorway. “It’ll be all right,” he told her. “You ain’t got nothin’ to worry about, lady. Nothin’ at all.”
“What are you going to do to me?”
Beef-Neck shushed her all the way into the hallway, with the second man closing the bedroom door softly behind them.
Then came a scream that was loud and sharp and ear-splitting.
But it was short-lived.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Only the creeps come out at night.
At least that’s what Kimball’s mother had told him when she had sheltered him. And from what Kimball had seen thus far, he couldn’t dispute that. The irony of this was that he had become a part of that exclusive circle of creeps; one who felt at peace under the cover of darkness.
He knew Jesse lied to him about the whereabouts of Becki. But she was alive. This he was sure of. Turning her to work for profit made sense. When people like Cooch saw a business opportunity, they readily accepted it as long as the deal promised to fatten their wallets.
He just needed to know where she was.
And since he knew Jesse had lied to him about her whereabouts, Kimball regarded it as Jesse’s choice of either having additional bones broken by him, or suffering through a far more laborious punishment from Vinny Cuchinata. Obviously Jesse chose to live, which Kimball couldn’t fault. But he also made Kimball’s job much more difficult as well. Finding her would not be easy.
But he would find her.
And soon.
The streets were empty. And the leafy canopies of the treetops swayed gently back and forth with the course of a light breeze, the colored leaves of the foliage falling to the ground. Nights were getting chillier as Halloween approached, and the moon was waxing toward its full-moon phase to provide an almost perfect atmosphere for the non-holiday.
The moment he reached Maple Street he felt an icy chill race up his spine which caused him to shudder. The air suddenly felt oppressive and heavy, and the wind began to pick up until the limbs of trees whipped madly about.
When he got to the door of his house and turned the knob, the wind died. The trees stopped moving. The nigh
t was silent. But the air remained heavy.
When he went inside the house and closed the door, he saw a broken bag of flour laying on the floor alongside a six-pack of beer. Two of the bottles had broken, the suds and foam mixing with the flour.
When he rounded the doorway his heart stuttered in his chest. His mother was lying at the base of the stairway with a horrible distortion to her neck. She was staring at what appeared to be a fixed point on the ceiling, but her eyes were already beginning to glaze over with that cold milky sheen.
When he looked up he saw his father sitting on the stairway looking down at her. He appeared numb and disconnected, his face neutral. Kimball wasn’t sure if his father realized if he was there or not. If he did, he refused to acknowledge him.
“I found her like that,” his father finally stated flatly. He continued to look at the body with odd wonderment. “I done come home and found her lying on the floor with her neck broke. It just ain’t right.”
Kimball took a few tentative steps toward his mother. Blood the color of burgundy wine slipped from the corner of her mouth and pooled against the floor, the drippings of death. And when he was less than a foot away his knees buckled and he went to the floor, hard, with his hands held out to her as if she would eventually rise and fall into his arms.
But she continued to lie there with the life of her once beautiful eyes that were once as green as emeralds, gone.
Kimball fell back onto his hind-side, and his mouth dropped as he felt the distant sting of tears in his eyes approach.
“It just ain’t right,” his father whispered.
At least that’s what Kimball thought he heard. But he wasn’t sure because everything seemed so surreal.
It just ain’t right.
Then something deep in Kimball’s gut reacted, the awakening of a sleeping giant. It was dark and angry and had a life of its own. It was vicious in its undertaking by devouring Kimball’s state of conscience, and replaced it with the cold fortitude of a machine. The stinging of tears went away. The cold chill that eclipsed his heart after seeing his mother dead was gone, having been replaced by an empty void. And his anger was no longer subdued or submissive, but a mainstay that was now rooted at the very core of his existence.
When he looked at his father he did so with fire in his eyes, the look of unbridled anger. It was the look he would keep with him as he walked the fine line of the Gray Area for years to come, often crossing the boundary and stepping into the Darkness, where he would meet his personal demons.
In the wake of his mother’s death, the Dark Advent of Kimball Hayden had finally arrived.
PART II
ORIGINS: DARK ADVENT
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Three Days Later
Forestdale Cemetery
Kimball’s father insisted on there being no wake, wanting to bury his wife without the agonies of prolonging the inevitable. At first Kimball took this as an insult, to be done away with the problem and move on with as little fanfare as possible. But this wasn’t the case at all. Kimball had found out the real truth why he never went to Connor’s wake. It wasn’t about missing the playoff games or that he didn’t care. It was because he didn’t have the courage to do so. Not after what happened so many years ago.
He was a boy, maybe twelve, when his aunt was involved in a car accident that killed her and her infant son. Instead of burying the two in separate caskets, they placed the infant on the mother’s chest in the same casket, with mother and son lying in gentle repose.
To this day that image had never left his mind.
In fact, it would be the driving force behind the nightmares that plagued him for years to come, night terrors they called them, dreams that seemed so real that fantasy and reality appeared to be one and the same.
Since then, he had never been to another wake.
And as they sat there listening to the preacher perform his sermon over the grave, Kimball could see his father fighting with as much inner muster he possibly could without breaking. Once in a while there would be a gelatinous quiver to his chin. But the man would always catch himself and reestablish that veneer of false bravado.
Kimball, however, felt little, if anything. He was numb and the moment was all too unreal. Something deep inside disallowed him to take any emotional stance at all. There was no pain. No grief. No sadness. Only the blunted feelings of a man who operated with the cold fortitude of a machine.
He had become his father.
But unlike his father, who let his emotions surface, Kimball’s did not.
They stayed buried.
When the sermon was over and family members said a final good-bye by tossing a palm full of dirt onto the casket, Kimball stood over the gravesite not with a handful of freshly dug earth, but with his mother’s rosary, the one she gave him.
He let the cross dangle in the air for a long moment, the crucifix swinging from side to side.
I won’t be needing this, he thought to her. Not where I’m going.
He allowed the obsidian glass beads to slip through the cracks of his fingers and onto the coffin, where the rosary hit the aluminum shell of the casket and broke, the glass beads then rolling off the surface and into the pit. The cross, however, with a crucified Christ, remained on the casket’s surface with the face of Jesus staring up at him with great sadness.
Kimball had made his choice.
He would walk the Gray Path.
As the group began to disassemble once the ceremony was over, Kimball looked up to see Beef-Neck and one other, both nicely dressed, standing outside their SUV about fifty yards away. They made no bones about being seen. In fact, they brought Kimball a message.
Beef-Neck brought a hand up and made a cutthroat motion across his neck with his fingers.
Kimball nodded inwardly: Message received.
He now realized that what happened to his mother was no accident.
After getting into his SUV, Beef-Neck rolled down his darkly tinted window, looked directly at Kimball, and gave him a lopsided grin of malicious amusement.
When the vehicle drove away, Kimball had his own thoughts: You keep smiling, you son of a bitch.
Because I’m coming after you with a message of my own.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
When Kimball and his father arrived home not a spoken word was passed between them. His father kept his hard exterior and his chin up, the posture telling the world he was all right when he was anything but. When his father went upstairs and closed the bedroom door, Kimball remained in the kitchen. From where he stood he could see the bottom of the stairway where his mother was found. He could almost see her laying there, a pale and ghostly image of her on the floor with her neck twisted at an awful angle.
After closing his eyes he gave a deep sigh. The house, without his mother, was as empty as he was. When he climbed the steps he loosened the knob of his tie and undid the top button of his shirt. As he moved along the hallway, he thought he heard his father weeping softly behind the closed door to his bedroom. Kimball stopped, the floor creaking as he did so, and the crying stopped.
Silence.
Then Kimball knocked lightly on the door to his father’s bedroom.
“Just a minute, son,” his father called out. “Changing my clothes is what I’m doing.”
But he knew his father wasn’t being completely honest. After moments of shuffling on the other side, his father opened the door. His eyes were teary looking. But whatever tears he may have shed were wiped away, which left his cheeks with a flushed look that was usually brought about by a deep rub.
“You all right, Pops.”
“Yeah, son. I’m OK. You?”
Kimball pointed into the room. “Can I come in?”
“Sure, son. If’n you need to talk. Sure.” He opened the door wide in invitation. “Come on in.”
Kimball stepped inside.
“What is it, son?”
Kimball stared down at his father. It was like David and Goliath, wi
th Goliath the younger of the two.
“It’s all right,” he told his father softly. “You don’t have to pretend anymore.”
“Pretend? Have no idea what you’re talking about, Kimball.”
“Yeah. Really.” Kimball stepped forward and did what he had never done before. He embraced his father and pulled him close, the man’s cheek lining up against his son’s chest. The action felt somewhat vulgar to Kimball. And he knew his father felt the same way, that this was unnatural. But neither relinquished their holds. In fact, his father slowly raised his arms and wrapped them around his son.
“It’s all right,” Kimball told his father with the same equal softness. “You don’t have to be afraid anymore . . . You don’t.”
His father began to shudder against him. The dam was beginning to crack.
“All those years of being afraid, all those years of being angry---it’s time to let go, Pops.”
His father sounded muffled as he pressed his face against Kimball’s shirt. “I don’t know what . . . you’re talking . . . about. I don’t--”
“All those years when you prayed to God, He had answered your prayers with me.” Though Kimball didn’t believe this, not one iota, he thought it needed to be said for his father’s sake. “You’re not alone anymore, Pops. I’m here to protect you. Nobody will ever hurt you again.”
And then the dam finally broke as his father screamed out pent-up sobs and wept fitfully against his son’s chest. The emotions had been decades in the making. The tough exterior, the damming of a little man’s fear he wanted no one to see, was gone with every tear shed. And Kimball continued to hold his father tight, feeling the warmth of the old man’s tears being absorbed by his shirt.
This lasted for forty minutes, his father wailing with banshee cries. Those who might have passed by the house would understand a man’s grieving for the passing of his wife, and would say nothing other than he had the right to catharsis. What they didn’t know was that the cleansing went much deeper. It was a lifetime of purging dark emotions with his wife’s death serving as the master stroke that broke down the barrier.
