EQMM, June 2012

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Then he'd just had to wait a few years till the property market picked up, at which point he'd sold off the Trevennor House estate for development. That had been the big money, the money that had enabled him to move to Las Vegas and into the kind of lifestyle he'd always hankered after.

  Mr. Tarplee looked at his watch. A quarter to four. As he'd got older, he'd cut down the whores’ visits to twice a week. Cheyenne would be knocking on the door of his suite at four. And what she did was another ritual which never failed to give him pleasure.

  Copyright © 2012 by Simon Brett

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  * * *

  Novelette: JENNY'S GHOST

  by David Dean

  David Dean recently retired from his position as chief of police for one of New Jersey's shore towns. Throughout his career with the police he was also a writer, with sales to EQMM going back more than twenty years. Yet police rarely figure in a central way in Dean stories. Maybe that's because his stories are less often concerned with solving crime than they are with exploring the effects of crime on those who commit or are victims of it. His psychological insight has made him a favorite of EQMM readers.

  Connor's head snapped back as if he had been slapped and his eyes flew open on a stampeding mass of humanity. Nearby a child cried and a hoarse voice cursed softly and steadily. People streamed this way and that and Connor thought of the ant hills he had kicked open as a child. Something large and glittering hove into view accompanied by a dying whine and blew the remainder of his dream into tatters; the jangling laughter that had awakened him fading into the nothingness of the past.

  The hectic pageant of the airport terminal resolved itself into the usual crush of vacationers and business people, some running, some strolling, but all struggling with the greater or lesser amounts of time granted to them by the airline schedules. The crying child was red-faced and miserable with boredom and restraint; her mother futilely rocking her with a blank, comatose expression on her strained face. The businessman across from Connor continued his litany of curses into his cell phone, his fixed, angry gaze all the while on Connor's face.

  The plane that had arrived began to discharge its passengers into the terminal and the noise level and degree of franticness rose accordingly. The laughter from Connor's uneasy dream drifted faintly over this in a startling counterpoint, like the distant cry of some exotic bird.

  Connor leapt to his feet, causing the baby to cease crying and eye him in fearful wonder. The businessman went silent. None of the hundreds of passing people appeared to take notice of either Connor or the laughter, and he could not see through the shifting, cattlelike rush of the newcomers. He suppressed the urge to stand on the molded plastic chair he had been sitting in—airport security had little tolerance for bizarre behavior of any kind.

  After several long moments, the crowd began to thin as people found their way, herdlike, to the subway train that would take them to baggage claim. The businessman continued to regard the slender, unshaven, thirty-something man in his crumpled grey suit, then abruptly lost interest, snapped closed his phone, and flipped open his laptop. Just like that, Connor was dismissed. The child, similarly disappointed, renewed her thin, penetrating wail as her mother looked on with the resignation of true despair.

  Several minutes went by and there was no repeat of what Connor was beginning to suspect was an aural hallucination. He rubbed his eyelids; then contemplated the coffee shop across the busy walkway and pondered if it was worth the effort it would take. This time the laughter was a note of joy, high and piercing, yet carrying a hint of surprise, or perhaps uncertainty, within its tremulous framework. Connor's fellow travelers parted as if cued to allow him a momentarily unrestricted view, and his eyes went immediately to the source of the laughter, even as his legs went weak and watery beneath him.

  He watched, barely breathing, as the thin, fragile-looking woman leaned into a man who occupied one of the stools at the nearby bar, his back to Connor. She appeared to whisper something to him, even as her slender fingers squeezed the fabric of his shirt sleeve, and the bicep beneath, in a possessive convulsion.

  The man, also slender and as dark-haired as Connor himself, flinched and leaned away slightly; then turned and said something to a companion on the next stool. They both laughed. Connor felt himself straining forward, as if this might allow him to overhear their conversation across the crowded, noisy terminal. The dark young man signaled for the bartender and appeared to order a drink after a brief flirtatious consultation with the woman. Then, just as the curtain of people began to close once more on this tableau, she turned her face in Connor's direction, her wide mouth open in a generous, trembling smile, her large brown eyes seeming to seek his own across the rows of chairs.

  Connor struggled to start his breathing once more, even as his heart lurched about in his chest like a drunk staggering from lamppost to lamppost. The woman was Jennifer . . . her laughter, the laughter that rang through his memories. It actually occurred to him that he might be dying, for how else could he explain this apparition . . . this visitation?—Jennifer had been dead for thirteen years.

  * * * *

  They had become lovers practically the moment they met. It had been the beginning of his junior year, her sophomore year, and all it had taken was a glance into her dark eyes across a library table, eyes that, like her voice and laughter, appeared to contain a depth and vulnerability that he couldn't resist. Within those tremulous pools lay a sensuality and hunger that had ignited his own, and after only days of their meeting he had stalked about like a starving man, his only food, the only antidote to his ravening hunger, Jennifer Armstrong . . . Jenny.

  His grades had plummeted with missed classes and halfhearted essays, yet somehow he had scraped by. There were calls from his concerned parents that he ignored. He did not go home that summer, but got an on-campus job so that Jennifer and he could set up house together.

  They shared a squalid little studio apartment that had housed generations of students, transients, and junkies. Its only window looked out onto a brick airshaft that let in precious little light while allowing their unseen neighbors’ cries and laughter to tumble into the room in sudden, unexpected bursts.

  Sometimes, Connor had felt as if he had sunk into a subterranean world in which only phantoms could be perceived in the dimness, their voices ringing out from time to time in shouts and curses. During such moments, Jennifer would pull him to her in their narrow, springy bed and run her long, sharp nails along his arm, digging in when she reached his bicep. Often this playful pinch would become painful and Connor would gasp, drawing in his breath at the long red trails she had left on his arms and thighs, her eyes never leaving his own, and within moments his desire would be reignited . . . greater than before. Their lovemaking grew more complicated . . . more demanding.

  Connor's senior year was a foggy memory. He attended classes only when it was absolutely necessary and sometimes failed to do even that much. His grades had dropped so alarmingly that the Dean of Students had issued him a warning. This same warning had also arrived at his parents’ home. His father had threatened to cut off any further money for college unless he moved back into the dorms and shed himself of Jenny. This he would not, could not, do. Shortly after that, Jenny revealed that she had not bothered to enroll in the spring semester. She already had everything in her life that she could want, she had informed Connor, and further education, she felt, was only a distraction and a waste of time. Connor, while nodding in agreement, had dimly registered alarm bells at this announcement.

  In spite of his threats, Connor's father had paid for his tuition after all, no doubt thinking that, as it was his final semester before graduation, his son might just stagger on through. But when Jennifer discovered his generosity she had grown angry with Connor, accusing him of weakness, of failing to be his own man. She had challenged him to walk away from both his parents and the school just as she had done months before. She had demanded a demonstrat
ion of the same love and affection she had shown without his asking. It was the first he had heard that she had ceased speaking with her own family. The bells in his head grew louder.

  Early in the semester, Connor was thrown out of a class for continued absences. Fortunately for him, it was an elective that he could make up in a summer session. Yet what unnerved him most was that he had forgotten he had signed up for it in the first place. He had understood then that he was no longer in control.

  That night, while Jenny worked at the campus union snack bar, he had packed his single suitcase and walked out. An old friend from his hometown who still lived in the dorms had let him sleep on the floor of his room.

  With encouragement from his parents, Connor had agreed to meet with Jenny at the quadrangle closest to their apartment and end the affair. He had hoped that the presence of passing students might help damp down the storm he feared might erupt, as well as bolster his own fragile resolve.

  His halting, and heartfelt, explanation of how their relationship was not good for either of them was met with tears and angry denial. Before he had even finished his carefully rehearsed speech she had sprung to her feet and slapped his face, calling him a coward. With her luminous face wet with tears, Jenny had stalked away screaming that they were finished, not because he had decided so, but because she now realized that he was not worthy of her, did not deserve her love. Connor had not dared to hope that it would be that easy. It hadn't been, of course.

  The following day she had confronted him coming out of class and tearfully thrown her thin arms around his neck. Sobbing into his shoulder, she had pleaded to be forgiven her behavior of the day before and for him to return home with her.

  Summoning all the strength he possessed, he had refused. Time, he had assured her, and space, was what they needed right then . . . some breathing room to regain their senses and assess their own identities; to evaluate what their relationship really was . . . and might yet become.

  Still clinging to him she had sobbed into his chest, “If you don't love me anymore, Connie, then please just kill me.” Only Jenny ever called him Connie.

  He had thrust her away in disgust and sudden fear and she had collapsed onto the wet, muddy grass like an abandoned child. Though her wails had followed him like a warning, his ears had burned with embarrassment at her display.

  Connor did not see or hear of her again for two weeks. A silence as dark and lowering as a summer storm had descended between them.

  The silence was broken by a call from the campus police acting on behalf of the city department. “Do you share an apartment with a Ms. Jennifer Armstrong?” the officer had asked over the phone.

  Connor remembered his fear, his hesitation. “Yes,” he had whispered, “I did ... but not any longer. We broke up.”

  “You still on the lease?” the officer had persisted.

  “Yes,” Connor had admitted, feeling guilty without understanding exactly why. “What's this all about?”

  “She's not answering her phone, or the door, and her folks have been calling the city police to check on her. We're just trying to assist. You want to let them in?”

  The alarm bells that had been sounding in Connor's brain for the past several months now became a strident clanging. “Yes,” he had breathed. “I'll be right there.”

  The rest was all bits and pieces, sights and sounds that collided and crashed into occasional coherence like the lens of a kaleidoscope only to break apart once more with the slightest movement. Connor's memory of that day carried only one image that remained fixed and constant—his bed . . . their bed, black and wet with blood; Jennifer a grey centerpiece in the arrangement. He had had only a moment in which to take in the awful climax of their relationship—his lover's nakedness rendered vulgar by death, her flayed wrists, the slack vacancy of her once-beautiful, lively features. But even as he had stood stupidly staring, the policemen had brushed him aside, rushing in to see what might be done.

  He had not followed to the hospital and when he had called there later in the day, he had been told that as he was not family, and they had not been married, no information on her condition could be given out to him. The nurse seemed to have taken pleasure in this pronouncement.

  Through the campus grapevine Connor learned that Jenny had died and that her parents had flown in from Ohio to take her body back home. No one had called him, and he had called no one. It was less a feeling that Jenny was gone than that he had been left behind somehow. The thought of attending her funeral, of meeting her parents, had never occurred to him. And just like that, it was all over, his sense of relief deep and guilt-ridden.

  * * * *

  Pushing his way through the last of the intervening passengers, Connor found himself at the entrance to the bar. Jennifer was nowhere to be seen. One of the two young men she had been speaking with gave him an uneasy glance, then turned away.

  Connor strode toward him, desperate.

  He recognized the fierce, possessive grip on his arm, the sharpened nails threatening the thin fabric of his sleeve, the nervous note that always lurked within her voice as she said his name. “Connor?"; all this even as he turned to see her face.

  The hubbub of the terminal faded away and Connor only dimly registered the presence of the restless throng that swarmed around them. Her face, Jenny's face, looked up into his, the dark eyes trembling with tears. Here was the same tumble of chestnut hair that he had stroked on so many nights as they had lain together in a breathless, happy sweat; the same narrow, foxy face, if slightly lined now around the eyes and mouth—Jenny's face. It was Jenny. Connor felt his own eyes go wet.

  “Connor?” she repeated breathlessly. “It is you, isn't it? Of course it is!”

  Connor seized her wrists to pull her to him, then hesitated. Like Thomas, he had to place his hand within the wounds to be finally convinced. He looked down at the thin arms he clasped and saw the white, wormlike scars peeking out in vertical furrows from beneath the sleeves of her blouse. “Jenny,” he moaned, as relief, guilt, joy, and even desire struggled for dominance within him. “Jenny,” he said again.

  The two men that she had been speaking with at the bar had turned to watch them. The dark-haired one smirked and said something to his buddy. They both laughed softly, then turned away once more. Connor saw this from the corner of his eye, but paid it no heed; he had no room for distraction now, no room for anything but Jenny.

  Still clinging to one another, they made their way to some vacant chairs at an empty gate and huddled together as far from everyone else as they could. Already, Connor knew that everything in his life must change—he would never have such a chance again and he had no intention of losing Jenny now that she had been miraculously restored to him. Already he was envisioning the announcement to his wife that he would be asking for a divorce. He had never truly loved her—he had always suspected it, but now there was no doubt left in his heart or mind. He loved Jenny; it was as simple as that; he had always loved Jenny.

  “Connor, oh Connor, I'm so glad I've found you!” Jenny kissed the knuckles of his hands.

  “Jenny, I still can't believe it's really you . . . all these years . . . ever since college I've thought . . .” He stumbled to a halt, still taking in her luminous face. “They told me you had died!” She wiped away his tears with the back of one thin hand.

  “No, no,” she whispered. “I couldn't die without you. . . . I wanted so much to, but I just couldn't.”

  Connor looked up, startled.

  “That's why I've kept looking for you,” she continued, smiling. “Everywhere I could, everywhere I've been, I've looked for you, Connie.”

  He smiled now too at the nickname that only she used. “What do you mean, Jen?” How easy it was to lapse back into their old conversional habits—how comfortable they had been together, Connor thought. “You must have known how to find me—you always had my parents’ number and address. Besides, I still live in the same town. . . . I'm in the phone book.”

 
; Her smile went vague at this and she glanced away for the briefest of moments. “It's not as easy as all that,” she murmured. “I try the best I can.”

  Connor feared that he had somehow embarrassed her. “It doesn't matter, Jen, it really doesn't matter—all that is important is that you are here and we are together. Let's just focus on that.” Suddenly it occurred to him that he had not given any thought whatsoever to whether she might be married . . . have children.

  He glanced down at her hands and noted that she bore no wedding band. “Is there anyone in your life, Jen? Anyone important, I mean?”

  “Only you, Connie,” she answered sadly. “It's only ever been you.”

  Connor felt himself flushing with pride and happiness.

  His thoughts were interrupted by the crisp, official voice of the airport intercom announcing that his flight was boarding.

  “Oh hell,” he breathed. He stood suddenly, still holding Jenny's hands in his own. “I'm sorry, darling; they're calling my flight. Just give me a moment to see if I can switch for a later one . . . I'm sure it's overbooked, they always are,” he laughed. She gazed up at him fearfully. “I'll be right back,” he assured her. “Stay right where you are.” He gently placed her hands back into her lap and turned away.

  As he did, he noticed an older man conversing with the two guys at the bar. One of them waved languidly in Connor's general direction as the gate attendant reissued her demand to board. Suddenly nervous, he commanded Jennifer, “Stay here . . . I'm coming back.”

  The exchange of tickets took far longer than Connor had expected and throughout the transaction he kept looking back over his shoulder. He was too far from the gate where he had left Jennifer to see her and far too many people interfered with his line of sight. When the exchange was at last completed he snatched the newly issued pass from the attendant's hand, muttered a thank-you through clenched teeth, then spun on his heel to race back to Jenny.