Scream Catcher

by Vincent Zandri

  Then, just like that, the beast bursts out of the night.

  Lennox simply appears from out of nothing. With one hand, he presses a cold, silenced pistol barrel against the old Captain’s upper back and reaching around with the other, he places an iPhone before his mouth as if it were a walkie-talkie.

  “Scream. For. Me.”

  But Mack doesn’t scream. Nodding his head slightly forward, he then rears back with all his power, skull-butting the Black Dragon in the chin.

  The beast draws back a quick step or two. But then just as quickly he stops, and stands his ground, that silenced pistol held out before him, aimed point-blank for Mack’s spine.

  “Play right, Captain!” screams the Black Dragon a split-second before squeezes the trigger.

  Although he hears no explosion, Mack feels the sledge-hammer kick of the round tearing through him. All strength escapes him. He drops to his knees onto the hard wet shale, a dime-sized exit wound in his upper right shoulder spurting blood.

  “Christ,” he spits. “Oh Christ …”

  Lennox stands over the old Captain, stares him down like a black widow spider contemplating a fly caught in its web. He holds out the iPhone once more.

  “Scream. For. Me.”

  “Fuck you,” Mack groans. “As God as my judge, I will see you die before this night is over.”

  But the words ring hollow and distant, even in his own ears.

  Lennox giggles. He slips the automatic back inside its shoulder holster and the iPhone inside a hip pocket. About-facing, the beast bolts in the direction of the pit’s opposite west end and the aluminum culvert that will lead directly through the earth to Assembly Point Road.

  As Lennox’s muscular image fades to black, Mack positions his left hand onto the wet shale. He tries to prop himself up only a half-second before falling flat onto his face.

  44

  Assembly Point Peninsula

  Thursday, 9:20 P.M.

  A newly arrived electrical storm is going full bore when Jude takes the stairs down into the vestibule. A quick white flash lights up the living room, exposes pine ceiling beams, polished walnut floors, log walls stripped of their bark and a large stone fireplace with its darker than dark, creosote-soaked railroad tie mantle.

  The flash is followed by a crash.

  But not of thunder.

  “Damnit!” shouts Rosie from inside the kitchen.

  The curse tells him that his wife has dropped the bag of bird seed.

  “You okay in there, Rosie?” Jude poses. “Remember what the doctor said.”

  But when she doesn’t answer he knows she’s too angry for words. Angry with herself.

  Rosie doesn’t like to make mistakes …

  Instead of words, he hears the familiar sound of the broom closet opening, a dust pan and broom being pulled out. He’s about to head into the kitchen, clean the mess up for her. But he feels a cool wet breeze blowing against his face and bare arms, the sound of the rain coming down now in sheets as if it’s pouring directly into the living room.

  Glancing over his left shoulder, he discovers that the front door is opening on its own. For a frozen moment he stands straight and stiff inside the vestibule, staring at the suddenly open door.

  Is he somehow responsible for leaving it open?

  He approaches the door with right hand extended, grabs hold of the damp brass knob, pushes it closed, locks the closer, attaches the safety chain. The door now secured, he decides to throw on a rain slicker and a hat, make a check on every bit of the home’s exterior. Starting at the dock and the tied-off motorboat, he’ll work his way up the back lawn, make a check on every ground level window, every door of the three-thousand-square-foot home.

  Just to be goddamned sure that I—the head-case of Lake George—do not make a crucial mistake at the expense of my family’s safety …

  It’s a mission he would start on sooner rather than later if only Rosie does not step into the living room and scream.

  45

  Assembly Point Peninsula

  Thursday, 9:23 P.M.

  His name was Charlie.

  He was one of Rosie’s beloved babies.

  A Betta fish, Charlie was born a kind of decorative blue, feathery aquatic creature. The reason for Rosie’s sudden shriek is that she’s discovered the now suddenly deceased fish atop the coffee table where it looks to have drowned in its own air—drowned after its translucent vase of fresh lake water was somehow tipped over.

  … by accident when I walked into the coffee table to relight the wedding candle?

  For what seems forever, Rosie and Jude do not exchange a word. Instead he tries to play the good husband by crossing the living room floor, taking her into his arms, holding her tight.

  “It’s all right baby,” he whispers. But everything is all wrong. Not only are things getting weird, he’s also sensing an unbearable guilt pressing down upon his shoulders.

  Releasing Rosie he makes his way into the kitchen, gathers a fistful of paper towels off the roller above the sink. Back inside the dim living room he lays some of the towels out flat onto the surface of the coffee table and the water that has pooled there. He wraps up Charlie in what is left over of the paper towels. Standing straight, he can feel the dead fish’s feather-lightness through the damp paper.

  As this is happening, Rosie sits herself down onto the edge of the stone fireplace ledge that extends the entire length of the far wall. Knees pressed together, she plants elbows squarely atop her thighs, buries her face in her hands.

  “Poor Charlie,” she utters through trembling fingers. “My poor baby.”

  Jude holds the fish in the palm of his hand. He stares at his wife, feels the pain of the word “baby” inside his sternum. For Rosie, her pets, no matter how small, are just as cherished as Jack, as the little baby girl growing inside her.

  Not quite knowing how to console his wife, Jude makes his way over to the half bath off the kitchen. He’s going to take care of the fish situation as quickly and painlessly as possible. But just as he’s about to dump the shrouded fish into the toilet, he makes out footsteps slapping their way from the living room, through the dining room and into the kitchen.

  Rosie sticks her head into the open bathroom door.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” she snaps.

  An electric shock jolts Jude’s heart.

  “We have to dispose of it,” he calmly points out, eyes peering not at his wife, but through the narrow window onto the rain and the night.

  After a silent time, Jude turns to see her standing in the open doorway, left shoulder leaning against the wood jamb, naked arms folded tight over her chest. In the near total darkness of the narrow half bathroom, he can make out only a portion of her distraught face, long smooth hair veiling much of it. She has no more words for him. But her silence screams for understanding.

  Trapped between the walls of that small room, the dead feather-light fish held in-state in the palm of his hand, what Jude realizes is this: there is something Rosie needs for Charlie. Knowing now what is expected of him, he wraps the fish back up in the damp paper towel, carries it back out into the candlelit kitchen.

  46

  The Molloy Gravel Pit

  Thursday, 9:31 P.M.

  The taste of blood is the first sensation that registers inside his brain when Mack regains consciousness. The salty, metallic taste of his own spilled blood and an acidic bile that shoots up from his stomach, stings the back of his throat.

  Just inches from where his face touches the rocky gravel pit floor, a narrow stream of red rain flows. The old Captain swallows a bitter breath, gathers the strength necessary to roll himself onto his back. He feels no pain along the length of his spine or in the lower right shoulder exit wound. Only a kind of remorse for having allowed himself (a man of my years, my experience) to be ambushed by Lennox so easily. With a deep breath and a rallying of his available muscles, he manages somehow to sit himself up. That’s when the sickness balloons i
nside his belly, rises up into his mouth. Spreading his legs, he vomits blood and bile onto the shredded shale floor.

  When emptied, he decides to lie back, stare up at a heavy darkness interrupted only by the occasional flicker of lightning.

  The hard rain pelts the old Captain’s face.

  So easy to just lie here and call it a life …

  But then death is not an option. Not when so many lives are still coiled around his own.

  With one single concentrated burst of effort, he manages to push himself up one-handed onto his feet. Lightheaded and dizzy, he swallows a deep breath, staggers forward in the direction of his ride.

  Fuck death and the horse she rode in on …

  He knows that from now on, his sole purpose in life is to get to his son before Lennox gets to him first.

  * * *

  Assembly Point Peninsula

  Thursday, 9:32 P.M.

  Black Dragon scoots his way up silently from the dock. Crosses over the gravel drive past the two-bay garage. Sets himself down onto his stomach. Slithers across the front lawn, sliding effortlessly in his lightweight bodysuit over the grass, the never-ending rainfall that soaks it providing the perfect slippery surface.

  To his left, the dark Assembly Point Road and the narrow stretch of pine and birch woods that lead up to Lake George Road. To his right, the dark, nearly black silhouette of a log home. Beyond that, the wide open lake.

  In his whirling mind Black Dragon is invisible to the naked eye. Transparency has nothing to do with stealth. Nothing to do with the precautions he’s taken to maintain the stealth.

  This isn’t black magic … This is reality … Invisibility is the gift from on high.

  The black clothing, the black-painted face, the shaved head only serve to enhance the perfect oneness of his soul and the balance between the carnal and the incarnate. In his spiritual core he believes himself to be truly invisible, his body impervious to sight, to touch … to the wrath of God, man or demon.

  He is the Christ; the chosen one.

  Clamped pirate-like between his teeth is an eleven-inch Teflon-coated fighting knife betrothed to him by the United States Marine Corps. The taste of Teflon-coated steel energizes him when he makes his way underneath the row of shrubbery planted directly in front of the log-walled house. Coming upon the wide bay window, Black Dragon stops. He takes the blade into his gloved right hand, cuts the incoming power line in the place where the one-inch conduit emerges from the soil and feeds through the top six inches of the structure’s concrete foundation. Not that he needs to cut the line during the blackout. But in his mind, he knows it’s the prudent thing to do. Because what if the virus were to suddenly be contained by state and federal antivirus detection software? What if the power were to be suddenly restored?

  Stealth and surprise would become severely compromised.

  Stealth, surprise and invisibility are the key components to this newly devised three-level kill game—a kill game that began from the moment Jude Parish became the witness to a murder.

  From down on the wet earth, Black Dragon lifts up his head. Using only his right eye, he manages to peer inside the log home. Inside the candlelit space, he is quick to spot the coffee table that supported the Betta fish’s vase. The same vase he tipped gently onto its side, allowing the water and the small fish it supported to spill out. Blue eyes glued to the transparent vase, he finds it odd that it’s still lying there on its side.

  He searches the room for the game players, the victims … the screamers. But they appears to be nowhere in sight. In his mind he expects them to be running around in all directions like two blind mice scared out of their mortal wits. Lowering his head, he sets the blade back between his teeth. He resumes his crawl around the south side of the log structure, gliding past Mr. Parish’s glass-walled study, past the screened-in stone patio, past the two Japanese maples planted directly in front of it and then around to the split-level log home’s backside. When finally he spots Mr. Parish and the beautiful with-child, Mrs. Parish, he stops and observes.

  Husband and wife are making their way down over the lawn towards the point where the property ends and the lake begins at the small stone retaining wall just to the left of the wood dock. It’s there beneath a large, white-barked birch tree that they fall to their knees in a kind of reverent gesture. Black Dragon eyes the woman as she begins to dig in the wet sandy earth with a garden spade while her husband illuminates the ground with a flashlight.

  For now the rain falls steadily. Not heavy or light. Just steady.

  Coming from out of the distance, well above the glowing phosphorescent deep water beyond the bay, Black Dragon spots bursts of lightning that flash against a bruised purple and black sky. Directly to his right, he spots the screen door that accesses the home’s kitchen. The first time he infiltrated the home, he did it the easy way—by simply walking through the front door after having tripped the lock. He planned on using a basement window as a second point of entry. But now he spots a far easier way of entering the home.

  Laid out like a snake atop his tight belly, the invisible Black Dragon slithers, makes his way for the open kitchen door.

  * * *

  Lake George Village Precinct

  Thursday, 9:33 P.M.

  It’s a simple case of love versus common sense.

  Or so thinks Lt. Daniel Lino as he bolts out the front door of the L.G.P.D. precinct. Through the darkness and the rain he recognizes the throngs of tourists and villagers being led by the uniformed cops to both ends of the now cordoned off Main Street. Bright battery-operated spotlights combine with the cruiser’s flashers, the explosions of colored light bouncing off the exterior front facades of the blacked-out businesses that line the west side of the street.

  Lino avoids the mostly drunk and rowdy tourist crowds completely by cutting across an alley that reaches from the south end of the village to its central point. He makes a left, then a quick right, before peeling back a partially detached chain link fence, squeezing himself through and entering into yet another alley—this one narrow, dank and deserted.

  He enters this place in direct defiance of Blanchfield’s orders to stay away from Lennox at all costs. But now that the GPS surveillance bracelet has somehow been removed and reported discarded under the Brook Trout Bridge, the prosecutor’s order of “stay away” is hereby revoked. Added to that is the issue of the missing evidence. Is it possible that a now free Lennox has somehow managed to get his hands on the forensic evidence? Has the killer stolen it with the intent to destroy it?

  Maybe the rules of the game have changed but Lino is still playing, no matter what. That’s the way he sees it as he approaches the dark alleyway.

  * * *

  Pulling the mini Maglite from his jacket pocket, he shines the narrow beam onto the wet pavement, then runs it up the exterior brick wall to his right, then up the brick wall to his left. It’s here he discovers the single metal-paneled door that leads to the basement apartment. Approaching the door with caution, he draws his service weapon.

  Rainwater drips off his brow onto his cheeks and mustache. He tastes the water between his lips. He knows that in all likelihood the surveillance bracelet assigned to Lennox has somehow been tampered with. One simply could not forcibly remove the metal alloy and heavy plastic device without triggering a series of remote alarms. He also knows that the only way Lennox could have unfastened the bracelet was by acquiring the code that unlocks it. That code could only have come from someone on “the inside.”

  In his mind, Lino has a very good idea who that insider might be.

  There are other things to consider. For instance, every cop is consumed with the blackout. Not a single officer of Lake George law is available to enter into the hunt for Lennox—assuming he’s fled the village in the first place. Not even Mack is around to help in the hunt. At least not directly. Mack has more personal matters to attend to, like the safety and well being of his family. Because if Lennox is on the loose and looking for
vengeance, then Mack will make certain to protect his son and his son’s family. Above all else, that will be the old Captain’s priority.

  It’s a simple case of love versus common sense …

  What all this means is that the task of finding and apprehending a now loose Lennox falls into Lino’s hands alone. There’s an emergency in Lake George and it’s up to the Lieutenant to answer the call. Which gives him every right in God’s world to conduct an illegal search and seizure on the premises of Hector Lennox.

  “So what the fuck are you waiting for, Daniel?” he asks himself aloud as he raises his right leg high, kicks the door in.

  * * *

  For the first time in what must be weeks, Lino has to laugh.

  Because after all that thought, all that deliberation, his illegal search and seizure will not be considered illegal after all. As it turns out, Lennox has been anticipating his arrival.

  “The proof is in the pudding,” Lino sadly whispers to himself.

  Not pudding exactly, but what resembles pudding. Shining the light onto the floor and walls, a white foamy substance covers everything. Like the metaphor suggests, it almost looks as though Lennox managed to pump in gallons upon gallons of pudding or maybe vanilla frosting, sprayed it over every square inch of wall, ceiling and floor space. From where Lino is standing in the open doorway, he can see a table covered with computer equipment that now is dripping white foam. The small couch, the kitchenette counters, the sink full of dishes, even the barred window is completely frosted with the white foam. Judging by the dozen or more empty fire extinguishers huddled in the corner beside him, the Lieutenant knows precisely the source of the foam.

  “Lennox knew we’d tear his door down eventually,” he whispers to himself. “So he decided to leave us a little present. Something to slow us down a little.”