Scream Catcher

by Vincent Zandri

The student is jarred awake.

  “Where am I?” Thoroughbred barks. He’s opening and closing his eyes, as if having trouble focusing inside the dark apartment.

  “Time to shave your head,” Black Dragon says.

  T-Bred, confused, groggy, dizzy.

  “I don’t want to … shave my head,” he slurs.

  “But you do,” insists Black Dragon. “You must be just like me.”

  32

  Assembly Point Peninsula

  Thursday, 7:30 P.M.

  Jude is seated at the head of the kitchen table when he does something entirely out of character. He reaches out, takes hold of Rosie’s left hand and Jack’s right.

  “Let’s try something new.”

  Rosie locks onto Jude’s face, throws him her pretend frosty facade.

  She says, “You’ve got to be kidding. You want to pray.”

  Jude glances down at his plate of food. At the neatly arranged steak, corn on the cob and green salad. Although the others have already started on theirs, he finds himself feeling the sudden need to offer up some words of thanks before digging in. Or perhaps, in all his anxiety, he simply isn’t hungry and doesn’t want to admit it.

  “Bear with me,” he insists. Then, recalling a prayer he learned during his first ever Christmas dinner with Mack at what had been the old Captain’s childhood foster home, Jude recites, “Dear God, may you be at our table and in our hearts. Amen.”

  “Amen,” Rosie mumbles.

  “Amen,” Jack tentatively repeats.

  The boy adds, “Rosie, is dad sick or something? Is that why we’re praying?”

  Clearing her throat Rosie cuts a small piece of steak, pops it into her mouth. It’s the first solid food Jude has seen her consume in twenty-four hours. Raising up her head, she issues a devilish grin.

  “No, my husband isn’t sick. But I do think he’s growing closer to God in his old age. In a hokus-pokus kind of way.”

  The round-faced Jack chews on his steak, peers up at his father.

  “Dad’s an old timer,” he giggles. “Like Mr. Magoo.”

  Cutting into the meat, Jude makes a crooked-faced sneer.

  “Mr. Magoo not,” he snaps. “Who’s the ferocious slayer of the dark monster?”

  “You are, Jude man.”

  “And don’t you forget it.”

  Lightning creates bright daylight out of the dark sky. A burst so quick, so brilliant, it takes the entire Parish family by surprise. The thunder clap that follows seems to rattle the stone and wood home atop its concrete foundations.

  Jude observes the faces of his wife and child go from animated, to stiff and pale.

  “My God in heaven,” Rosie exclaims.

  “Now you believe,” Jude says.

  “It’s like the end of the world,” says Jack. “The night of the dark monster.”

  “It’s not the end of the world,” Jude assures the boy. Still, he finds himself turning around in his chair to get a look out the window to see if any of the trees or maybe the dock has suffered a direct lightning strike. “No dark monster ‘round here, remember?”

  “Good,” grins Jack, starting back in on his steak. “Because I was beginning to worry.”

  Turning back around to face the table, Jude picks his knife and fork back up.

  Maybe now that the big boomer is past, I can eat in peace.

  It’s exactly what he would do if the lights didn’t go out.

  33

  Assembly Point Peninsula

  Thursday, 7:32 P.M.

  The Parish home has gone dead.

  Dead means no power, no lights.

  It also means that any hope for remaining summer twilight has been dashed by the thick black storm clouds that have invaded the Adirondack skies.

  “Shall we say another prayer?” poses Rosie from the dinner table.

  “Told you,” Jack says, looking up from his plate. “The world wants to be over now.”

  Another lightning bolt strikes just short of the log house. Close enough for its electromagnetic charge to raise the hairs up on Jude’s arms and neck. In the nanosecond that follows, he is able to register the wide-eyed faces of his wife and child. The resulting thunder concussion nearly blows them out of their chairs.

  “Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” Rosie cries.

  “Lots of praying tonight,” Jack nervously giggles.

  Rising up out of his chair, Jude abandons a meal only half picked at.

  “Any idea where we’ve hidden the emergency flashlights?”

  “Good one,” answers Rosie.

  * * *

  They work as a team, searching the kitchen drawers for the flashlights they are certain exist but that cannot be located.

  At least not on demand.

  “There’s always the gas lamp in my office,” Jude reminds Rosie.

  “And what exactly do we use for fuel?” she points out.

  But after another few minutes of searching the master bedroom, they manage to find not one, but two flashlights which are stored inside Rosie’s underwear drawer for safekeeping.

  “Good of me to remember my intimate apparel.”

  Down inside the garage, Jude also discovers a portable radio they used at a cabin rental on the opposite side of the lake last year while the log home was being constructed. Besides the radio, they also uncover a big white box filled with white candles left over from their wedding reception of sixteen months prior at the Lake George Yacht Club.

  With Jack standing inside the open door of the dark, musty smelling garage interior, Rosie flicks on one of the flashlights which is gripped in her right hand, shines it directly onto the yellow radio which is gripped in the other. Thumbing the power switch, she tunes into the first A.M. band station she can locate on the dial before handing the radio over to Jude.

  At first, he can’t be sure if it’s the signal or the lack of juice in the batteries, because the reception is weak at best. So weak, he finds he must crank up the volume just to make out the faint voice.

  “… by all initial appearances,” states the deep-voiced broadcaster, “a power outage affecting much of the northeastern seaboard. While spokespersons for the Federal Energy Commission remain close mouthed, it is still too early to determine if the outage can be linked to an act of sabotage or simply an over-utilized power grid that since the 1950s has been continually bombarded …”

  The portable radio goes dead. Jude turns it off and on again. Bits and spurts of broadcaster voice ooze from the small speaker like ghosts in the machine. But even that dies out after maybe ten seconds. Holding the radio in both hands he gives it a shake, attempts tuning into another station. But still he comes up with nothing—not a sound other than the slight blood drumming in his head.

  Jude feels he has no other option but to set the radio down onto the hood of the Jeep.

  He says, “I don’t suppose there’s anymore batteries.”

  Rosie brushes back long dark hair so that it veils the right side of her face. She stands tall between the Jeep’s grill and the ever-still Jack.

  Crossing naked arms over her chest, she says, “You mean like in case of emergency.”

  Outside the dim garage another thunder crash. As if on cue, the three of them about face, gaze across the room at the wide roll-up door like somehow they possess the power to see right through it, all the way up through the woods to the lake road. Slowly turning their attention back to one another, Jude notices that Jack is copying Rosie by crossing little arms over little barrel chest.

  “End of the world,” the proud boy repeats. “Night of the dark monster.”

  Rosie and Jude find themselves exchanging tight-lipped frowns like, Kid’s got a point.

  “There’s always the Jeep radio,” Jude suggests. “Let’s try and find daddy’s keys. ‘Less of course, the dark monster ate them too.”

  34

  Assembly Point Peninsula

  Thursday, 7:54 P.M.

  Maybe its signal is far stronger, but the dash-mount
ed Jeep radio provides no real answers. What Jude does discern however from the WGY broadcast is this: while believed to have originated in New York’s upstate region (anywhere between Cohoes to the south and Plattsburgh to the north), the power outage is no longer limited to the Adirondack north county. An immediate chain reaction has occurred and its debilitating effects have rippled along the already overtaxed power grid. Much of New York State and parts of Montreal are either blacked or browned out.

  According to the limited reports, power plants have been afflicted by “sudden and traumatic overloads” which means flash fires spontaneously sparking inside overheated generators and turbines.

  The entirety of New York City is down, including the subways. As a former resident, Jude pictures the throngs of commuters stranded in subway cars, emergency lighting causing stunned faces to glow with eerie apprehension. Airports are shutting down runways and rerouting incoming traffic.

  The ex-cop sits behind the wheel of the old Jeep. His wife and son stand silently beside him outside the open door.

  Electrical Power Grid System …

  The four words provoke an imbalance inside his guts, a sickening sense of over-vulnerability, food for the demon. For Jude, the situation is not unlike driving over the Brook Trout Bridge, knowing that it might collapse the moment he reaches its center, sending him on a fifty-foot drop to the rocks and rushing whitewater below.

  The WGY broadcaster announces that the station’s emergency-generated signal is growing ever weaker. In a few moments the station will shut down for an indefinite period of time in order to conserve what little energy it has left at its disposal.

  Between the electrical storm and the cold dark garage interior (and the coming of the dark monster), he can’t help but be reminded of the 1938 Orson Welles War of the Worlds broadcast.

  It’s exactly how he puts it to Rosie.

  Laughing, she rolls her eyes in total agreement.

  “Dad,” Jack speaks up, “what’s the War of the Worlds?”

  Turning to his son, Jude gazes into deep brown pools reflected in the dim flashlight.

  “It’s a story about the end of the world,” he admits.

  That’s when the radio goes silent.

  35

  Brook Trout Bridge

  Thursday, 8:08 P.M.

  With the van parked off to the side of the road inside a cluster of pine trees, Black Dragon momentarily separates himself from his student while making his way on foot towards the Brook Trout Bridge. In the pitch darkness he jogs along the soft shoulder until coming to the metal span bridge constructed as a part of the “Federal Employment Act” of the mid-1930s. In his right hand he holds the electronic surveillance bracelet. Looking down off the bridge, he can see how the heavy stream water foams white and effervescent against the rocks and boulders before rapidly emptying itself downstream into the lake. For a time he just stares intently down into the frothing water. He listens to its perpetual rush, feels the mist that rises up from the deep gorge, wet and slimy against a black-painted face.

  Off in the distance comes the whine of police sirens.

  The entire town of Lake George, Black Dragon begins to realize, has officially assumed panic mode. While this is a good thing, it also means that time is short.

  Holding the surveillance bracelet out over the water, Black Dragon lets loose with a high-pitched laugh. He releases his grip on the device, watches and smiles as it disappears into the whitewater.

  The whitewater flows heavy beneath him.

  He pictures the bracelet already sitting on the bottom of the lake not far from where the stream empties into it.

  “Time to catch some screams,” he mumbles before trotting back to the van.

  * * *

  Assembly Point Peninsula

  Thursday, 8:10 P.M.

  T-Bred parks the white van far enough around the corner from 23 Assembly Point Road not only to go unnoticed, but to also shield the vehicle behind the thick stand of pine and birch trees. Having issued his final farewell to his mentor (Black Dragon having slipped into the lake in order to issue the L.G.P.D. Lake Patrol the surprise of their short lives), he reminds himself that stealth and surprise attack are the keywords for the stormy night. Especially when it comes to Ray Fuentes, the plainclothed cop assigned the job of protecting the Parish lakefront property.

  During the past two nights, T-Bred, under orders from his mentor, has spent hours casing not the property, but the protector—the geriatric Supercop. Like a deer hunter he observed the protector’s patterns of behavior from an old tree stand anchored to a thick pine in the center of the woods.

  Turns out, there hasn’t been a whole lot to learn.

  Ray Fuentes is a simple man after all, with simple needs and routines. It’s been his habit to remain inside the parked cruiser for all hours of the afternoon and night. For T-Bred, it seems like the only time the cop spent away from the Parish home was from eight in the morning to noon when a blue uniform took over. That’s when Fuentes would head home to his double-wide in Fort Anne for a shower, a shave and change of his shirt.

  One would think that the old cop would need some sleep eventually. But then T-Bred knows from careful observation that Supercop Ray Fuentes catches the occasional Z while on witness protection duty inside his dry, cozy Jeep Cruiser. Which is exactly what T-Bred is counting on when, with digital video camera and Teflon-coated fighting knife in hand, he slips out of the van, quietly closes the door, begins his silent trek along the dirt road through the rain and the near pitch dark of the Adirondack woods.

  * * *

  Lake George Village Precinct

  Thursday, 8:11 P.M.

  Only minutes into the power outage and already for Captain Mack the village precinct feels like a fishing trawler that’s suddenly capsized. Headquarters is running on half power via an emergency generator, while the staff of uniformed and plainclothes cops run around in every direction, some seemingly without purpose other than getting out of the way of those who have something important to accomplish. With landline and cell phone services temporarily out of order, the limited radio chatter has become a cacophony of shouts and cries for help and/or backup.

  For the past half hour he’s been in a frantic search for what he can only assume is misplaced forensic evidence crucial to the next morning’s Preliminary Hearing. Despite his search, nothing has shown up. He knows it’s possible if not probable that P.J. Blanchfield appropriated it in order to perform some last minute study and examination. But then perhaps that’s just wishful thinking. Perhaps he’s giving her the benefit of the doubt. Because all calls to her office have thus far gone unanswered and not a single soul in the department can produce the sign-out slip required by law.

  And now the phones are down.

  Mack was about to head out to the courthouse when the blackout hit. Now it’s impossible for him to go anywhere. The blackout brings immediate chaos to the upstate vacation resort, with Main Street having been barricaded off on both its north and south ends. But the action allows for the uniformed police to organize the evacuation of the village business district. Uniformed police holding bullhorns to their mouths calmly request that tourists exit the commercial establishments and proceed in an orderly fashion to privately owned vehicles parked in the municipal lot, or to areas designated “Bus Stop.”

  But many of the tourists (especially the bikers) are drunk and going nowhere fast.

  Having already ordered the dispatching of additional units to patrol the outlying streets and their now useless traffic lights and signals, Mack has requested that the remainder of the force begin patrol operations for Lake George, plus the town of Fort Anne which is included within its jurisdiction. He’s also called out the Department of Environmental Conservation rangers to patrol the state parks that line the perimeter of the lake, including Tongue Mountain. Per S.O.P. he’s been in close contact with the SEMA command center located in a bunker basement between the downtown Essex and Washington Avenues in Glens Falls.
But for now he must await word from the State Police Commissioner down in Albany who will almost certainly offer his personal assistance. But the forty-year veteran would rather cut off his pinky finger than have the State Police or any other foreign agency patrolling his village and lakeside streets.

  Then there’s the issue of his son, his daughter-in-law, his grandson.

  With the Lennox Prelim to take place in a matter of hours, he knows that of all the nights having passed since the arraignment, tonight will be the most crucial. Possibly the most dangerous or vulnerable.

  Lennox has been too quiet, too out of sight for three days and two nights. Only the ankle bracelet has provided any kind of signal indicating his downtown village presence. But then Blanchfield passed down strict orders to avoid placing any kind of tail and/or trace on the beast; give him nothing he could use against us in court; nothing he could construe as “harassment” … Three days without a word or a sighting of the scream catcher. It’s as if he’s gone underground, prepared himself not for a defensive war, but an all out frontal attack … And now this blackout.

  Sitting himself up on his desk Mack attempts to radio Ray Fuentes. With the power completely out, it’s imperative that Ray remain glued to the Parish residence at all costs.

  But then Ray is not responding to the radio call.

  No response other than cold static.

  That’s when Mack’s intercom buzzes loudly.

  Thumbing the speaker, he grunts, “Yeah.”

  “Captain, this might have something to do with the blackout, but I’m getting a very strange reading from Lennox’s surveillance bracelet.”

  Mack perks up, pulls the handset, presses it up against his ear.

  “Come again.”

  “The Global Positioning System is giving me a reading entirely different from his normal address in the village.”