The Blood Born Tales (Book 2): Blood Dream

by T. C. Elofson

  “He walked into a propeller?” Kenny asked in confusion.

  “No, Kenny, not ‘walked’. He was pushed. The case was never solved, but it was generally believed to have been racially motivated. Everyone assumed it was a hate crime.”

  I then brought up a picture that was taken at the time of his death, and what I saw sparked recognition in me. There was a small mark on the body of the victim. I almost hadn’t seen it at first glance, but as I zoomed in to examine it and reworked the pixels of the photograph, I had to stop and look away. It was an awkward moment. Kenny could feel my apprehension as we stared at my computer unblinkingly for what felt like a long, pregnant pause.

  “What? What is it, Tim?”

  “I thought at first it was just a scrape, but look at the mark on the body. I have seen that in my research before. It’s what is called a daimon hand.”

  “Did you say daimon hand?” Kenny asked pointedly.

  “Yes.” I replied warily, realizing I sounded like a lunatic.

  “What the hell is that?”

  “The daimon hand comes from the ancient Greek. It means ‘spirit’ or ‘divine power’. But roughly translated, it’s the touch of a demon. Now, the Japanese believe that there are good demons as well as bad demons, but I have yet to see this mark on anyone possessed by anything good. In fact, I’ve never seen anyone possessed by anything good, either.”

  “Tim, come on man. Possession? Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “And demons? There’s no such thing as demons. I mean, I’m having a hard enough time getting behind the whole ghost thing, and I’m still having issues with the whole vampire thing.”

  “What?” I asked him incredulously. “Kenny you were a vampire! Vampires are demons. Demons don’t have to be red things with horns and tails holding long pitchforks. They’re just evil spirits from alternate dimensions.”

  “Oh, is that all they are?” he asked sarcastically.

  “Listen to me. I don’t think they killed the boy out of hate, like the article said. I think it was fear. But they terrified him to death. If they wanted him dead, they could have just killed him. But they didn’t just take his life. They wanted him to suffer. And the fear and terror that he must have gone through was unimaginable.”

  “He died of fear? And you think this ghost is this kid?” Kenny asked me doubtfully.

  “Yes, ghosts are tied to the places that they haunt. They can’t just bail, but if this child was possessed by a demon, his spirit would be tied to the demon as well as the place. I don’t know what that means, but it’s not good.”

  I thought for a moment.

  “According to the Tantric Buddhist scriptures, and Taoism, Shinto, and some other sources of Japanese religions, there’s lore about spirits possessing people and riding them for miles. Whenever they leave the body, they are slung back to their usual haunts but then the ghost can go wherever they want.”

  “Okay, so let me see if I can get a handle on this way of thinking. A spook grabbed a vampire in town and drove to Seattle?” Kenny asked. “That sounds a little ridiculous, man.”

  “It’s possible, but I’m not sure that’s exactly what happened. The ghost is being controlled. It’s killing.”

  “So the marks on the bodies…?”

  “Yeah, they are more than just slash marks from airplane propellers.”

  “You’re kidding me,” he said, almost disgusted.

  “We’ll just have to find him. The ghost, I mean.”

  “How? He’s a ghost,” Kenny insisted. His voice was shaking and his heart was racing.

  “Dude, you have to calm down. Slow your heart down. Now, relax.”

  “You know what this is, Tim…? What are we doing?”

  “We’re hunting ghosts,” I told Kenny sternly. And I could feel how agitated he was getting. I could feel how unnerved he was becoming. That darkness was quickly returning to his mind and the terror that I had sensed in him was building once more. I wanted him to take a breath. I needed Kenny to calm down just a little.

  “Exactly. We’re hunting ghosts. Who the fuck does that?” he asked me.

  “There are things out there, Kenny. Bad things. And this is the only way I know to help you,” I said, trying to sound reassuring.

  “We hunt monsters. What the hell, Tim? I mean, normal people, they see a monster and they run. But no, not us. No, we go right in like it’s any other day. Is that who you are now? This is your life? We used to be cops, man! Chasing bad guys. And now I’m in Toledo, way out of my jurisdiction, and far away from any sense of my reality!” Kenny roared at me.

  “Look, Kenny. Right now, right here, this is how it is. You’re dying and this is all I know when it comes to saving you. You’re scared. I get it. But I need you. I need you to fight and I need you to help me do this. Now, the father of that murdered Hispanic boy is still alive and living in town. I need you to come with me, okay?” I couldn’t have made my voice sound any calmer.

  Kenny slumped down in his seat and placed his head in his hands for a long moment. I could feel the fear in him and it was intense.

  “Alright, Tim. I’m with you,” he sighed.

  Kenny was unsettled as he looked around the rundown home, trying to read its personality and mood. The years of its neglect and disrepair screamed out to him for attention. We were standing on the porch of the aged, decaying home of Javier Santos, father of Nesto Santos, the boy who died in ‘86. We knocked on the rundown screen door of the Santos home and moments later the door opened. I could hear Mozart playing inside as a gentle looking man greeted us with a wavering and uncertain smile. Bread was rising, homemade stew was simmering on a stove that looked like it was from the ‘50s, and I smelled red wine coming from the glass in his hand.

  “Yes…? Can I help you, gentlemen?”

  I let Kenny do the introduction and watched as he produced his badge.

  “Mr. Santos? Javier Santos?” The man nodded slowly. “My name is Detective Johnson and this is my associate, Tim Anderson. We are with the Seattle PD.” Kenny gave me a sidelong glace which told me how very uncomfortable he was about calling me a cop.

  “We need you to answer some questions about your son, Nesto.”

  “Nesto? Nesto’s been dead for twenty-five years. What could you need to ask me about Nesto for?”

  “Sir,” I began. “We need to find out more about his death. You see, it is a cold case and the files have all gone to microfiche.”

  “Why do you care?”

  “Nesto was a schoolboy friend of mine and what happened to him was terrible. I need to know what happened. For my own reasons,” I told him, completely lying.

  “Even after all this time?”

  “Yes, sir. It’s important to me.”

  “So you say you were friends with Nesto?” asked the old man. He looked at me suspiciously.

  “Yes, sir. In school,” I said.

  “I don’t recall Nesto having many friends in school… Please sit down,” he said, directing us to a long, dirty sofa that sat next to a wall filled with framed photographs. It was obvious that at one time this wall had been loved because of all the pictures of the Santos family, but now it merely served as a scornful reminder of everything Javier had lost.

  “When did Nesto pass?” Kenny asked.

  “He was twelve. About twenty-five years ago.”

  “What happened to him?” I questioned him. “I mean, of course I’ve heard the rumors, but I was just hoping you could tell me what really happened.”

  “It was not a good time for us… Nesto was beaten several times that year by older neighborhood kids. The community was having issues with his upbringing. We didn’t go to church and have never really believed in God, even though Nesto would have been fine with it if we had. He would have done anything to be accepted. But in truth, it had nothing to do with God. It had everything to do with race. People in this town seem to be afraid of dark skin. In the end, my boy was murdered. Of course I could never prove it
. They told me there was just no evidence.”

  As his strong voice began to waver, the old man dipped his head low as if it was all just too horrible to talk about. Then he took a deep breath and went on.

  “He was ‘scared to death’. At least, that’s exactly what the doctors told me. What a stupid description. He was thrown into an airplane propeller, you know. But it was his heart that really killed him. Nesto died of heart failure at the age of twelve. They scared him to death. God took my boy to spare him the pain that he would have felt, and I am thankful for that. It was my fault. I should have seen it coming. Nesto had his troubles, being a minority in a small town like this.”

  “It was hard for him. I can only imagine,” Kenny offered comfortingly. If anyone understood, he did.

  “School was never easy for Nesto. We didn’t have much money. You know kids. They can be cruel, but I never imagined that it would end the way it did. But after what happened to his mother, he…” Javier just trailed off with a weary shrug.

  “His mother?” I asked.

  “Yeah, Jane, my wife. She died when Nesto was only eleven years old. Cancer. I was working three jobs at the time and Nesto had to take care of her. But he was a great kid. He made sure Jane got her medicine. He helped clean up after her. You know, you watch somebody die, waste away to nothing—it does things to a person. Especially a young person. Sometimes I’m glad he can be with her now—in Heaven—but I miss my boy. I miss them both.”

  “That must have been hard on him. Losing his mother that way,” I said quietly.

  “He didn’t ever talk about it. Not even to me,” the old man said. “There was a lot of anger in that boy.”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” I said sadly. But I’m sure my words meant nothing to him now and I felt like an ass for lying to him. “Can you tell me something else? I remember a unique birthmark on the back of his neck. It looked like three cuts on top of one another. Is that right? It was so long ago, I’m not sure I remember it right…”

  “Not a birthmark exactly. That didn’t appear until the day of his first birthday.” Javier said, glad to speak of something less somber. His words made some sense to me. Those marks showing up on a birthday like that. Now I knew it. Nesto had been touched.

  “We would really like to pay our respects,” Kenny said. “Would you mind telling us where Nesto is buried?”

  “Oh, I didn’t bury him. I had him cremated.”

  Mr. Santo’s words hung in the air over me, and I hoped that maybe I had simply heard him wrong. But I had not. The last sentence had stunned me into silence, I’m afraid. I had no more words and Kenny had to take me out of this empty home.

  We needed to make a quick getaway. I felt weak and limp. My mind was spinning out of control. I thought I was going to vomit or perhaps pass out—something that would look really bad for an officer of the law. So we made our exit as quickly as we could, giving the man our apologies for his loss and telling him again how sorry we were for bothering him.

  “Thank you for your time, Mr. Santos. We will leave you now. It was good to meet you.”

  “Please let me know what you find out. If you find anything…” Javier mumbled the last sentence dejectedly.

  “Of course. Goodbye, sir,” Kenny told him as I rushed out the door, gasping for fresh air.

  “So what do we do now?” Kenny asked as I took small, labored steps down the creaky wooden staircase of the Santos home. The long weather-abused boards of the decrepit stairs bowed under my weight. I struggled to breathe through my nose and my heart was hammering like a machine gun as my entire body began to panic. I tried to will myself to calm down. Hyperventilating would only make it harder for me to get air, I tried to tell myself.

  Panic. I was feeling true panic suddenly. I tried to inhale and spit was dripping down the back of my throat. I coughed and gagged as my heart exploded against my ribs like fists trying to pound down a door. Pounding, pounding, pounding, and the woods and trees turned over on end and I couldn’t move. I stumbled and Kenny reached out and took a hold of me.

  “Whoa, Tim! You okay? I got you, man. I got you. Take a breath.”

  I shut my eyes forcefully and could still feel the tall trees around me spinning over my head. My stomach was tight and unrelenting in the waves of nausea.

  “Thanks, man. I think I’ll be alright now, Kenny.”

  “I’m supposed to be the one that’s getting all swoony and hyperventilating,” he told me, a kind smile spreading across his face. His look of relief made me feel a bit better.

  “Yeah… Sorry about that, man,” I said. “What are we going to do? Um… I’m not really sure,” I answered his original question from a few seconds ago. My heart was starting to slow down and my breathing soon returned to a calm rhythm.

  I was scared. Not as scared as Kenny had been at times, I’m sure, but I feared my best friend, the man I had known since I was eighteen and totally naive, was going to die. I wanted to stop it. I would have done anything to stop it. After all, I would have done anything for Kenny. I knew and he knew it. But I also had some terrible knowledge that he could know nothing about.

  Chapter 21

  3:05 p.m., May 6

  Everything seemed so quiet in the rundown, overgrown farmland outside of Toledo. I couldn’t imagine how many people had stayed in the ranch houses or in the local farms and yet had had no idea what had raged around them. Like a hurricane blown out to sea, the furious forces had fled. But that didn’t mean evil still didn’t lurk in that small town of sheltered farmers and retired city slickers.

  The engine of my truck rumbled under the hood as Kenny and I drove down a thin country road. Kenny was posing questions to me, trying to keep me focused and on task.

  “So, in all the lore that you have been reading lately, was there anything that could explain how this could be happening?”

  I pulled to the side of the road and cut the engine. I closed my eyes and took a long, deep breath before I responded. For the last few moments my mind had been having trouble focusing on those issues. In fact, even though I had spent the last few months actively researching cultures that had any mythology about the supernatural, I had actually found very little in my memory that seemed helpful. Really, most of what I had read was based on superstition and was nothing more than fables passed down from generation to generation, none of which seemed very reliable to me. Of course on the other hand, everything that I had known about vampires was also based on tales along those same lines.

  “Javier Santos must have kept some part of his son, some lock of hair or fingernail clippings, something. As long as some aspect of the physical self of the boy is still here, his ghost will be tied to this plane. Nesto needs to be released. Normally I would say we could dig up his bones and salt and burn his remains, but there is no way to do that. But a lock of hair would be enough to keep him here and then release him.”

  My mind was racing. There was a silence between us, as if Kenny was pondering my statement. Then he spoke with his voice so low I had to struggle to hear.

  “Wait, didn’t you and Sara keep a silver locket holding a lock of Merric’s hair from when she was a baby?”

  “What?” I asked in amazement, and my mood lifted.

  “Yes, Sara has it in her baby book. It’s a pretty common practice. Maybe Mr. Santos did the same thing.”

  Kenny was smiling now and the look on his face made me laugh. There was a glimmer of hope suddenly.

  “Parents used to make their child’s first toys out of his own hair, you know. Dolls and such,” I told him.

  “How is it you know that, Tim?”

  “Oh, lately I’ve come across all kinds of facts that until now had little meaning to me.”

  “Oh yeah?” Kenny had a sly grin on his face.

  “Alright. I’ve been watching the History Channel more than usual.”

  “That seems more like you, Tim. So you’re thinking that Mr. Santos might have done something like that with his kid?” Kenny asked.
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  “You got it, man.”

  “Well, we can’t go back and ask him, now can we? I mean, that’s really pushing it.”

  “No, I’ll have to go back after he goes to sleep,” I told Kenny. “And no, you can’t come with me. You’re a cop and I won’t risk your job for this.”

  Kenny looked over at me exasperatedly and I could feel his eyes burning down on me once more. He seemed to be doing that a lot lately, and I did not like the direction our friendship had taken in the last few months.

  “You’re going to break into the poor guy’s house?”

  “Yes.”

  I knew he was going to be difficult about this. Didn’t he understand that I had nothing to lose?

  “Tim, no. That’s not going to happen. No matter what’s at stake, you’re not going to go breaking into that poor man’s home.”

  “Kenny, really, I think…”

  “No, goddamnit! I told you that you’re not doing this! We just have to figure something else out. Okay?”

  “Fine.”

  I knew he was just trying to protect me. But things were getting a little too real and down to the wire. I was totally willing to do whatever it took and he knew that. I guess it was just his way of protecting me from myself.

  I turned my gaze out the window. The light of the sun across the open fields was mirrored in the windows and hot tubs of the new ranch homes. The rooftops were dark in the void of gold and yellow all around them. Not even a bird in sight. There was an empty, frigid brightness. It’s what I felt in my chest when I thought about Kenny now. I wasn’t sure what to do just then. It angered Kenny that I would so easily put myself at risk, but it angered him even more that I would do it without him, without my friend, my partner. Because in his eyes, I still was his partner and that would never really change. Not really. And that little hint of protective friendship that I perceived in him made me feel just a little better.

  “If I can’t break into his house then we need to think of some other place a piece of Nesto could be.”