by Mark Lukens
And soon she was asleep.
5.
It was time.
The Shadow Man watched the trailer from the darkness of night. There had been a German Shepard on guard, but he had already taken care of that problem. The rundown doublewide trailer sat under a canopy of giant oak tree branches. Next to the trailer was a huge garage used for fixing up cars. A floodlight spilled light down onto the garage, but left the trailer mostly in darkness. Between the trailer and the garage were a few hulks of rusted-out cars along with other vehicle parts and stacks of tires. Five other cars and trucks were parked in the weedy lawn, some of them possibly repaired or waiting for repairs, one of the trucks was undoubtedly the man’s own vehicle. Even with all of the vehicles, the Shadow Man knew that the man was alone in the trailer. Two deep ruts etched into the grass served as the driveway; the ruts ran from the gate where the killer stood to the doublewide trailer and the garage in the distance.
The killer moved through the darkness like a living shadow, creeping closer and closer to the trailer, and then he slipped around the corner to the back door.
6.
Greg had a sudden jolt of alarm as he sat in front of his TV. He wasn’t sure where the feeling had come from, but he was suddenly on-edge and nervous. He could tell something wasn’t right. He felt like someone was watching him and it gave him a crawling sensation on his skin. A rush of blood flooded his muscles. His heart started pounding in his chest so hard he could feel the rush of blood thumping in his ears.
He sat up a little straighter and looked around his cluttered and messy trailer. He realized he hadn’t heard Bo, his German Shepard, bark for quite a while. He got up from his recliner and felt a little light-headed as he went to the front door and opened it.
Greg stood at the front door of his trailer, the door wide open. He whistled for Bo, but his dog didn’t come running and he didn’t hear anything out in the dark. Damn dog, he thought. Bo wasn’t the greatest watchdog in the world, but he looked mean, and if people saw him they usually thought twice about entering his yard.
Greg walked down the three wooden steps from the trailer to the weedy ground. He took a few steps out towards his truck and looked around. It was dark out here, with the only light coming from the floodlight over the garage door. His porch light had apparently burned out. He wondered if he had any light bulbs in the house.
“Come on, Bo!” he shouted, but he still didn’t see the dog anywhere. “Dinner time!” he yelled, hoping that would coax him out of the darkness, but it didn’t. Bo was probably out at the other end of the five acre property, probably chewing on the fence and trying to get out. He’d gotten out a few times before, but the neighbors always brought him back. All the neighbors around here knew that Bo was just a big ol’ pussycat.
Still, something didn’t feel right to him. Greg had learned to trust his gut instincts over the years – they had kept him out of trouble from time to time. One time a few years back he had sudden urge to pull over on the side of the road, which he did, and then he watched an eighteen wheeler run a red light at the next intersection a few seconds later. He remembered that his hands had been shaking and he’d been sweating. True fear. He’d sat on the side of the road for a few moments until he was calm enough to drive again.
And now that true fear was back. His hands trembled and he could feel a cold sweat on his back, dripping down his spine.
He thought he should go check the large double gates on his chain link fence to make sure they were locked. He even took a few steps out into the darkness towards the gates, but then he stopped as the fear tingled along the nerve endings just under his skin. The gates were closed and the chain was locked, he was sure of that. It was a nightly ritual for him.
Instead of checking the gates, he walked back to his doublewide and climbed the steps and went back inside. He closed the door and locked it. He didn’t usually worry about locking his front door because he always kept the gates locked and Bo was always roaming around, but for some reason he wanted the door locked tonight.
The TV was blaring a cop show as Greg walked from the front door to the kitchen. He felt a little better now that he was back inside his house with the door locked. He tried to shrug off the feeling of fear as he walked into the kitchen. He didn’t feel like cooking so he poured himself a bowl of cereal, except he used a salad bowl instead of a cereal bowl. Not good for his waistline, he was sure, but he’d given up on dieting years ago. He was always going to have a pot belly. He’d even quit drinking beer a few years ago, but his belly refused to cooperate.
He added milk and a spoon to the cereal and took it from the kitchen back to the living room. He planned on plopping down in his recliner in front of the TV and watch some Law and Order re-runs and munch on his cereal. Maybe fall asleep in his chair.
And he would keep his cordless phone close by tonight. But then he thought that maybe getting his shotgun out of the hall closet would be a better idea.
Greg stopped in his tracks about halfway to his lumpy recliner.
Static blared from the TV.
And static blared in his mind. It was the strongest feeling he’d ever had in his life – much stronger than when he’d pulled over onto the side of the road and watched the eighteen-wheeler run the intersection. A shockwave of fear ran through his mind. There was no denying it now, there was no shrugging it off as imagination, he was certain now that he was in grave danger.
He didn’t know exactly what kind of danger, but he knew it was imminent.
The cereal bowl slipped from his hands which seemed to have lost their strength for a moment. The plastic bowl crashed down to his laminate wood floor and then bounced up and finally settled upside down a few feet away from him after the milk and cereal had sprayed out across the floor.
Like the spray your blood will make, a voice whispered in his mind. But the scariest thing was that it didn’t seem to be his own voice. It was like someone else had just whispered into his ear (and he even looked around to see if anyone else was right behind him), but the voice had been in his mind.
Greg knew he didn’t have much time – there was only one thing he could do to save himself. He ran through the living room for the hallway. He was still wearing his work boots (still wearing his work clothes for that matter, grease stains and all), and his boots thundered across the floor.
He reached the hall closet and tore the door open.
Someone’s in the house! his mind screamed at him.
He searched through coats and boots and other odds and ends stuffed into the hall closet, but he couldn’t find the shotgun.
“Where the fuck is it?”
It had to be in here. This is the only place he ever kept it.
But it wasn’t in the closet.
“Looking for this?” Greg heard a man whisper from behind him.
Greg turned around and he didn’t even have a split second to react before he saw the butt of his shotgun arcing down at his face, he didn’t even have time to put his hands up in defense.
There was an instant flash of pain and then the world went black. Greg was out.
7.
Tara slept on the couch as the TV’s flickering light washed over her. The rest of the apartment was in darkness.
From the darkness came a whisper.
“Please help me.”
Tara’s face twitched, her eyes closed tighter.
“Tara,” the voice whispered. It was a man’s voice and it seemed closer to her now. “Tara, help me.”
Tara opened her eyes and she was face-to-face with Greg. Blood matted his hair and stained one whole side of his face. His eyes bulged with unknowable fear.
“Please, Tara. You have to help me. The Shadow Man’s here.”
Suddenly, the man was dragged away from Tara, pulled by his feet into the far shadows of the living room. His mouth was open in a silent scream. He tried to claw at the floor, but he couldn’t stop the invisible force that was dragging him back into the darkness. Three o
f his fingernails popped off as he left claw marks in the wood floor.
Tara jumped up on her couch, her legs tucked up underneath her body, her eyes wide open. “No!” she shouted at the darkness.
She fumbled with the lamp next to the couch and tried to wrap her fingers around the switch, nearly knocking it over before she finally twisted the knob.
The light. The blessed light.
She looked around at her living room in the soft glow of the lamp, but there was no blood-soaked man huddled in the corner.
Greg, her mind whispered. His name was Greg.
Tara let out a long breath and closed her eyes for a moment. But then she opened them – afraid that the horrible image of the man might come back if she kept her eyes shut too long.
She looked back down at the floor where he had been dragged away. But there were no claw marks on the floorboards, no broken-off fingernails, no trail of blood from his body.
Tara got up on shaky legs and hurried into the kitchen. She turned on the light over the stove and then opened the refrigerator to grab a bottle of water. She was so thirsty – she drank half of the water down. Her hands were still shaking from the nightmare, but she was beginning to calm down a little.
Something on the coffee table in front of the couch caught her attention. She hadn’t noticed it when she’d been on the couch even though it was right in front of her.
She set the bottle of water on the counter and walked back into the living room on legs that still felt a little unsteady. She stared down at the coffee table. There was a sheet of paper on the table and two pencils. One of the pencils was snapped in half.
She looked down at her right hand and saw a cut on the inside of one of her fingers. It was just a small cut, it had barely bled, it didn’t hurt and she hadn’t even noticed it until now.
Tara looked back at the paper and two pencils bathed in the flickering light from the TV and soft glow from the lamp beside the couch. She couldn’t remember bringing the paper and pencils out of her office.
She’d been sleepwalking again.
And she’d been drawing in her sleep again.
She sat down on the couch and stared at the paper which was face-down. Her night terrors were getting worse. The Shadow Man was back and he was out there killing people, and she could feel him in her dreams. And the Shadow Man knew that she could see him. The Shadow Man wanted her to see through his eyes, he wanted to show her the things he was doing.
And she knew that the Shadow Man would be coming for her soon. She could feel it.
Tara picked up the paper and turned it over.
On the paper was a quick sketch of a gun; it was a revolver with its cylinder open and six bullets spilled out of it. The drawing was quick and rough, like the sketches she had made of Jen. She could see where she’d pressed down so hard on a part of the drawing that she must’ve broken the pencil there. She saw a dark spot on the paper that could be a drop of her own blood.
A gun and bullets. What did that mean? Was that what was used to kill Greg?
No, Greg wasn’t killed by a gun. His death had been much worse than that.
Tara stared at the drawing and she believed that this was a clue to the next murder. The Shadow Man was giving her clues now, daring her to piece them together, daring her to find him before he found her.
But she didn’t want to find the Shadow Man. She just wanted to stay away from him.
At the edges of the paper she noticed two numbers: a two and a nine. At the top of the page was one word: Pine. And scrawled at the bottom of the drawing was another word: Trinity.
What did these words and numbers mean? Were they associated with the gun and bullets somehow? What would Pine or Trinity have to do with a gun? Or the numbers, two and nine.
She laid the paper down on the coffee table, face-down again, and a shudder rippled through her muscles.
She had always been afraid of giving in to her visions, giving in to her telepathic power completely. She’d always been afraid of where it would lead to. But if she was going to stay alive, and if she had any chance of keeping anybody else alive, then she needed to try and open herself up to her ability. She needed to see what this killer was doing. Normally, after a sleepwalking episode, she would sleep in her bed with the rope tied around her ankle, but she felt like she needed to let herself sleepwalk now; she needed to let herself draw sketches in her sleep if that’s what it took. She needed to see where all of this was going to lead to.
She needed to see through the Shadow Man’s eyes. She needed to see the horrible things he wanted to show her.
Because her life depended on it – she was sure of that now.
CHAPTER SIX
1.
It was nearly noon when Detective Perry and Detective Jackson drove onto Greg’s property through the open gate in the chain link fence. Two sheriff’s cars and a paramedic’s vehicle were already parked on the lawn in front of a doublewide trailer that looked like it was barely held together by rust and spit. Near the trailer was a large, free-standing metal garage that reminded Perry of a Quonset hut from his days in the Marines. The cars, trailer, and garage were all nestled underneath massive oak trees with heavy branches that didn’t look like they’d be able to make it through the next round of summer storms.
Perry had gotten the call about an hour earlier. He was still working on the Jennifer McGrath case and this one had some similar characteristics to that murder. The call about this murder had come into the station as another anonymous tip from another throwaway cell phone.
The killer wanted them to see this.
Detective Jackson had ridden with Perry and then wished he hadn’t – Perry drove way too fast. Even if they were just going to lunch, Perry had to speed. For someone who moved and spoke so slow and methodically, his driving was a direct contrast. But the drive here had been worse than ever, and Jackson had gripped the armrest so hard he’d nearly left a permanent impression in it.
They both got out of the car after Perry parked beside a sheriff’s car and then they walked towards the trailer which had its front door wide open. As they got closer they saw a sheriff fill the doorway, waiting patiently for them to approach.
“I’m Sheriff Tully,” the older man said and extended a hand after Perry and Jackson climbed the three steps into Greg’s trailer.
Perry gave the sheriff’s hand a brief squeeze and nodded at him. “Detective Perry.”
Jackson already had his nitrile gloves on, but he shook the sheriff’s hand anyway and smiled at him, giving him a warmer greeting than Perry. “I’m Detective Jackson.”
The Sheriff nodded and gave them a tight smile. “Well, we got an anonymous tip about a murder here. We found the owner’s dog at the far edge of the property, near the fence. Dead.”
Perry ignored the sheriff and he walked across the living room towards an overturned plastic bowl and a mess on the floor.
The sheriff ambled over to Perry. “Over there’s some spilled cereal and milk.”
Perry nodded at the sheriff. He could see what it was.
The sheriff moved with methodical slowness around Greg’s lumpy recliner and walked to the hall where the closet door was still wide open. Jackson thought Perry was slow and methodical with his movements and speech, but this sheriff was even worse; at least Perry’s actions seemed functional and not a waste of motion.
There were shoes and some clothing pulled out of the hall closet, but there were also some blood splatters on the wall and a big puddle of blood on the floor.
“This is just how we found it,” the sheriff told them. “It appears that the owner of the property dragged some things out of the closet like he was looking for something. Then it looks like he was hit with this shotgun.”
Detective Perry was growing a little impatient with the sheriff’s play-by-play of the murder scene. “Where’s the body?”
Jackson looked down at the shotgun with the blood-stained stock.
The sheriff noticed Jackson looki
ng at the weapon. “That’s the homeowner’s shotgun,” the sheriff said, ignoring Perry’s question. “We checked the serial numbers and it’s registered to him. But whoever killed him used the gun to knock him out, not to kill him.” He shook his head. “Bizarre.”
Jackson nodded as Perry sighed impatiently.
The sheriff pointed down at the linoleum floor in the hallway where a wide streak of dried dark blood led right to the back door which was ajar. “Looks like he was dragged outside through that door. Must’ve been a strong fella to drag this big man’s body out of here.”
Perry stared at the sheriff with his pale blue, heavy-lidded eyes and asked again: “Where’s the body?”
“Out in the garage,” the sheriff said. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Hawkins threw up when he saw it.”
2.
Sheriff Tully remained inside the trailer while Perry and Jackson followed the drag marks through the grass to the side door of the garage; the main garage door out front was still pulled down and locked with a padlock. Before entering, they stopped and looked down at the concrete pad outside the doorway; it was stained with blood. They let the side door close behind them after they were inside and the putrid, coppery smell hit them right away. No one else was in the garage right now and that’s how Perry wanted it.
No one else except Greg.
A police photographer from the sheriff’s department had taken some photos earlier and he was waiting outside by his car. But Perry would call their own photographers and forensics experts from the Tampa Police Department to take more photos and gather evidence.
Right now he wanted to study the scene with Jackson and no one else.
