Dead Voices

by Rick Hautala

  Perched on the porch railing, Elizabeth was gazing out at the small downtown area, watching the sporadic traffic rumble by. The warm breeze carried the full promise of summer coming on fast, and she was filled with pleasant memories of sitting in the shade of the porch as a child, sipping lemonade as she watched the heat haze ripple along the road.

  “I — what did you say?” Elizabeth asked, shaking her head as she drew her attention back. .

  “Eldon Cody ... remember?” Junia asked, smiling. “I thought I mentioned him to you last night, on the drive home. “

  “Umm, yeah — I think you might have,” Elizabeth replied although, searching her memory, all she had from last night’s rainy and dark drive was the heart-squeezing terror she had felt every time she looked up and saw those headlights, glowing in the rearview mirror.

  “He’s someone else who might be able to help you,” Junia said. Lowering her voice and casting a suspicious eye toward the open kitchen door, she finished in a whisper, “You know — in contacting Caroline.”

  As usual, Elspeth was dozing in the living room. Junia’s secretiveness made Elizabeth wonder if Junia’s involvement with occult and spiritualistic things was another dark secret — like her hidden bottle of brandy-that she had to hide from her older sister. Although she didn’t feel anything close to humor, Elizabeth chuckled and said, “After what happened at Claire’s house, I’m not so sure I want to mess around with stuff like that anymore.”

  “Oh, that’s too bad,” Junia said suddenly, as she covered her mouth with one hand and opened her eyes wide with embarrassment.

  “What?”

  “Well, you see,” Junia replied, casting her eyes downward, “I thought you told me it was all right to go ahead and get in touch with him.” She shook her head as if she had an ear full of water. “Maybe I’m just getting old, but I could have sworn you said you thought it was a good idea. Anyway, I’ve already called him and arranged for you to go out and see him on Sunday afternoon.”

  Elizabeth stopped herself before she snapped, Well you can just call him again and tell him we won’t be there, and, looking at the honest embarrassment in her aunt’s eyes, she felt a powerful surge of affection for the old woman.

  “He lives in Standish, on Black Hill Farm,” Junia went on. “And from what I’ve heard, he’s done some pretty remarkable things.”

  “Like what?” Elizabeth asked, her gaze shifting back out over the town. The view looked and felt as though a black cloud, heavy with rain, had passed between her and the sun. She shivered, dreading her aunt’s response and knowing she should stop the whole thing right now; she should admit to Junia that she hadn’t really wanted to go to Claire’s in the first place, and that she sure as hell wasn’t interested in this Eldon Colby or Cody or whatever the Christ his name was. Especially not after what had happened at Claire’s!

  “He’s got this new method of communicating with the departed,” Junia said. “I haven’t seen him do it, mind you. I’ve only heard about him through a mutual friend of ours, but ... well, when I spoke with him this morning, he told me not to mention anything about his method.”

  Elizabeth almost said, Sounds like horse shit to me, but then thought better of it.

  “Because of something going on at church, Mrs. Saunders won’t be able to stay with Elspeth on Sunday, so it turns out I won’t be able to go with you,” Junia said. “I can give you directions to his house, though. I told him you’d be by sometime early in the afternoon.”

  “Gee, thanks,” Elizabeth said, bristling at the thought of practically being forced to do this alone. If it had been anyone besides Aunt Junia, she knew she would have told that person to go to hell! Aunt Junia’s forwardness bothered her. though; it didn’t seem like her, and Elizabeth wondered if maybe she, like Elspeth, was starting to show her age.

  “There was one thing he did say, though,” Junia added.

  Elizabeth looked at her, arching her eyebrows questioningly. “I’m not so sure I want —”

  “He said you should bring two blank cassette tapes with you.”

  “What?” Elizabeth said, unable to hide her surprise. She couldn’t deny the uncomfortable feeling that she was being railroaded into all of this.

  “That’s what he said,” Junia replied firmly as though, now that she had said her piece, that was the end of the discussion. “He said for you to bring two blank cassette tapes, and for your own good, make sure they haven’t been opened.”

  For my own good, huh? Elizabeth thought bitterly. That’s the whole problem with practically everything that’s happened since I got home: everyone’s telling me what I should be doing for my own Goddamned good!

  2.

  Elizabeth helped her aunts with supper that evening, and, throughout the preparation, eating, and cleaning up of the meal, neither Elizabeth nor Junia again mentioned anything about Claire or Eldon Cody or engaged in any other kind of occult talk. Maybe, Elizabeth thought, it was because Elspeth stayed awake until after ten o’clock, by which time Elizabeth had to head home, and Junia had to keep quiet about such things around her sister; or maybe it was simply because everything was settled, and there was nothing left to discuss.

  After ten, Elizabeth excused herself, saying she had to get home so she would be fresh for work the next morning. She wasn’t really the least bit tired, but didn’t want to exhaust either one of her aunts, or overstay her welcome.

  Elizabeth didn’t know why, but as she approached the turn onto Brook Road, she began to feel tense and restless. More than a week ago, her mother had told her there were three things she wanted her to do. First, call Doug and talk to him. which Elizabeth had no intention of doing. She knew she couldn’t avoid it simply by putting it off, but so far her mother hadn’t mentioned it again.

  The second thing was to stop lying to her mother. That comment had cut Elizabeth deeply, because she felt more than a little guilty. She convinced herself that they were nothing more than’ ‘little white lies,” but why couldn’t she just be direct and honest with everyone, all the time?

  The third thing was perhaps the most difficult to accept or even contemplate — it was visiting Caroline’s grave. Although Elizabeth hadn’t told her mother about it. She had tried, that day she had bumped into Doug at the cemetery; but for· some reason she was positive she wouldn’t have been able to go up the hill to the site. The thought that she didn’t even dare go visit her daughter nagged at her mind constantly day and night.

  Elizabeth knew she had to eventually go out there. The least she could do was place some fresh flowers on the grave. She also knew damned well she couldn’t go there now — not after the sun had set! But as she slowed for the turn onto Brook Road, the turn that would bring her past the Oak Grove Cemetery gate, the stinging pain of loss gripped her heart. She was suddenly seized by a blind fear of even driving past the cemetery, so instead of turning left, passing it, and going home, she headed straight out Route 22 toward Buxton. She knew she was just fooling herself by excusing her action as just her need for a long drive. but that didn’t make her turn around.

  Heading west on Route 22, Elizabeth watched the road unscroll lazily In front of her headlights, feeling a small measure of relief when she didn’t see another set of headlights come up behind her and stay there, dogging her tail. At one time a car did approach from behind, but, not being in any mood to fool around, she slowed down way below the speed limit until the impatient driver passed her — honking his horn angrily and crossing a double line, no less!

  “Where are the Goddamned cops when you really need them?’ she said to herself. She chuckled at the thought of Frank, pretending he hadn’t followed her out to Claire’s house and back the night before.

  As the taillights dwindled and then disappeared around the curve, Elizabeth gasped aloud when she realized where she was heading. She slowed the car to a stop at the side of the road, then killed the engine. Slouching forward over the steering wheel, she stared blankly at the intersection up ahead.
From out of the darkness, a night bird sang and then fell silent. The night closed down around Elizabeth. She was aware only of her ragged breathing and the rapid thump-thump of her heartbeat, pulsing in her ears.

  She was parked about a’ hundred feet from the spot where, only a year and a half before, she and Doug had watched in horror as the Buxton town snowplow scooped up their Subaru and carried it down the hillside and off into the dark night. She snapped off her headlights and just sat there, staring ahead into the swelling night.

  “Jesus Christ,” she whispered as her focus blurred. In the haloed blue glow of the streetlight, she could see the front of the church that stood to the left of the intersection. The road ahead, forking left and right, was silvery with moonlight, and the breeze wafting in through the car window sent a chill dancing up her arm.

  Elizabeth licked her lips as she recalled the events of that horrible night. Her mind filled with sharp bursts of color and deafening noise, and every image was ghoulishly underlit in flashes of brilliant light. Elizabeth swallowed with difficulty, her throat as dry as if she had just now inhaled those flames that had consumed her daughter.

  “Come on, Elizabeth,” she whispered, surprised at how distant and distorted her voice sounded to her ears. “Get your stupid ass out of here!”

  She wanted to start up the car and drive the hell away from there, but she couldn’t will her hands to move from the steering wheel. Through her tears, her eyes were focused on the lit intersection ahead. Everything got hazy with dim light, and she almost convinced herself that she had been magically transported back in time. With just a little kick of imagination, she could see that the moonlit landscape ahead of her was really covered with blowing, drifting snow.

  Elizabeth’s pulse raced faster and faster as she imagined — soon! right now! — that she would see headlights appear in her rearview mirror. It wouldn’t be Frank Melrose, following her; it would be her own Subaru, with Doug at the wheel ... herself sitting in the front passenger’s seat ... and Caroline, strapped safely — so she thought! — in the backseat.

  “No ... No!” Elizabeth said, her voice tight with tension. “Stop it! Stop it right now!” Her fingernails pressed into the plastic rim of the steering wheel.

  But there was no way to stop the rush of her imagination! She had to sit there, replaying the accident in her mind, overlaying it onto this warm spring evening. She stared ahead in stark horror, waiting breathlessly, watching their Subaru speed down the road from behind her, approach the intersection, and, just as it started to take the curve, slide into the head-high plow ridge. The flashing lights of the snowplow appeared from around the curve ahead of her. She and Doug scrambled out of the way as the plow swept the car up over the snowy embankment. She could see the flashing lights of the plow underlighting the branches of the trees as it bulldozed the car down into the ravine. She wondered as she stuck her head out the window — out into the blizzard that had been raging then — whether she would be able to hear the shrieking crush of metal, the roar of the explosions, the tormented echoes of her own screams ... and Caroline’s ... ?

  Help! ...

  Mommy! ...

  Then the intersection began to glow with yellow light, bleeding out of the darkness and quickly overwhelming the faint blue glow of the streetlight. A jolt of horror seized her as she stared helplessly ahead, her mind filling with a cold blast of terror.

  Is this really happening? Can I really be seeing this?

  Her eyes were stinging. Her lungs burned from lack of air. She tried to take a breath but couldn’t.

  Is it possible? she wondered, as fear, sharper and stronger than anything she had ever felt before in her life, gripped her. Can I really be seeing what happened on that night? Do the ghosts of people who died suddenly and violently reenact the scene of their deaths in the place where they died?

  The steadily brightening yellow light infused the night, exploding and swelling until it looked like dawn bursting over the scene. In the harsh light, Elizabeth could see every detail of the intersection in mind-numbingly sharp clarity. The rippling grooves of tree bark — the deep blackness of every shadow under each clapboard of the church — every curled and peeling strip of paint on the church doors and windows-the pebbled smoothness of each crushed stone in the asphalt surface of the road ... everything stood out in bright relief and cast ink-deep shadows ... shadows as dark as death.

  “Help ... “

  The single word zipped through Elizabeth’s awareness like a feather, blown and tossed on a gale-force wind. The flood of light intensified. Unable to blink her eyes or look away, Elizabeth noticed something reaching up over the tufted grass from behind the crest alongside the road. Something ... something white and thin ...

  “ ... Mommy!”

  ... was reaching, clawing up over the embankment. Elizabeth clearly saw ... something trembling like a bleached branch in a strong wind as it struggled upward, clawing toward the night sky.

  “Help! ... Mommy! ... “

  “Oh, my God!” Elizabeth heard herself say. “My God! No!” Even as the words slipped from her mouth, they disappeared in the roaring, rushing noise that filled the night. Elizabeth wanted to scream, but there wasn’t enough air in her lungs to begin to make a sound. From over the far edge of the road, she saw a hand! — a human hand! — reaching up, groping, clawing at the night as though the hand could snag onto the blackness of night, as if the night were a dark, funereal curtain, and pull that hand’s owner up ... up and back into the world. The flood of yellow light got brighter, jabbing Elizabeth’s eyes like fiery spikes.

  “No! It can’t be!” Elizabeth wailed, staring at the clawed hand struggling to reach upward. She watched in horror as the fingers worked futilely, clenching and unclenching in spastic twitches.

  Suddenly, Elizabeth’s ears filled with a blasting sound that shook her. Light exploded into a blinding glare, and then, with an airsucking roar, a trailer truck zoomed past her parked car. The suction of its passing shook the car as dust and small pebbles blasted through the open window, stinging the side of Elizabeth’s face. She raised her hands to protect herself, thinking in one mind-freezing instant that the truck hadn’t passed her by; it was, even now, crushing down on top of her, and she — like Caroline! — would die in a fiery explosion that would rattle the nearby church’s doors and blowout its windows.

  The truck was already a hundred feet or more down the road, the whining of its engine trailing behind it with a quickly diminishing wail, when Elizabeth snapped back to reality. A stinging coldness spread out from the pit of her stomach as she groaned and collapsed forward, barely aware of the pain when she banged her forehead against the steering wheel. All of her misery came out in one long, tortured groan, and she cried so hard her chest and stomach hurt. Her eyes felt bathed in acid.

  Elizabeth lost all sense of time as she hunched over, crying out her pain and misery. The night, so recently alive with menace and terror, settled peacefully back into a dark lull. She knew if she looked up toward the intersection she would see no trace of the accident of a year and a half ago, and she realized that she had only imagined seeing a white hand ... reaching up into the night ... reaching for her! And as she looked through the fish-eye lens of her tear-filled eyes, she told herself that Caroline was gone ... dead and gone ... forever!

  “Forever...” she rasped. Her throat sounded as if it were lined with sandpaper. “I’m sorry, baby! You’ve got to believe me, honey. I’m sorry! I never wanted you to die!”

  Her voice hitched painfully in her chest as a flood of sour-tasting acid kicked up from her stomach into her throat. Unconsciously, she loosened her aching hands from the steering wheel and, with the fingertips of her right hand, started to rub the inside of her left wrist, where she could feel the puffy welt of scar tissue.

  “You have to believe me, honey,” she whispered, her voice almost a snakelike hiss. “Your father’s not the only one who misses you! Baby, I wish I had died that night instead of you! I ju
st wish I could have ... could have said good-bye.”

  3.

  When Norton still hadn’t shown up at the station by three-thirty, Frank called his home. Frank couldn’t shake the feeling that Norton was faking it for another day off. He didn’t sound all that bad over the phone-certainly not as bad as he said he felt. Frank figured he was just pulling a few extra days off for personal reasons, and wasn’t about to clue in the police chief to his suspicions. Actually, he was looking forward to the prospect of patrolling alone tonight. He had gotten rather tired of working with Norton; enough so that he was even considering a request for either a different shift or a new partner. This would give him plenty of time alone ... to think.

  And he sure had plenty to think about.

  Frank wanted to think about Elizabeth’s situation from as many angles as possible, and not be blinded by the feeling he had for her. Most of all, he wanted to understand what she was going through and help her as best he could-probably in spite of herself, he thought, bitterly remembering their recent phone conversation.

  Since she had accused him of following her and her aunt out to Raymond and back, Frank had been bordering on panic. He knew it hadn’t been him, and he was tormented, wondering who the hell it had been! He hadn’t told Elizabeth the truth, figuring if that’s what she thought... no amount of convincing was going to change her mind; and secondly, he might be better able to watch her and help her if she thought, however wrongly, that he was the problem.

  But this latest development only reinforced his conviction that Elizabeth was the object of some crazy person’s obsession. Certainly, anyone who would dig up a corpse and cut off its hand, use that hand to choke the local cemetery caretaker to death, and then use it as a five-flame candle on Elizabeth’s daughter’s grave had to be considered dangerous. Frank was also convinced that the fire at Henry Bishop’s house had not been accidental. As far as he could tell, Harris and Lovejoy’s investigation was going nowhere, partly due to the lack of clues and partly because they were swamped with other work. Investigating Barney Fraser’s murder had to take precedence over everything else, even the “supposed” threat to Elizabeth. Frank was thankful that — so far — he hadn’t been brought into the official investigation because, just as he thought he would be more help to Elizabeth if she thought he was the one following her around, he thought he might do better work if he wasn’t directly involved with the investigation.