A Room For The Dead (THE GHOST STORIES OF NOEL HYND # 3)

by Noel Hynd

  First, he was drenched with sweat. But then he had the sensation of something enveloping him. Almost instantly, he felt deeply ill, as if the air pressure in the witnesses' chamber had changed too quickly.

  The priest could not move or speak. And he could barely breathe. His wet palm found the gold crucifix near his belt. But his hand seemed to have no feeling. No direction. The stench from the execution-it was vaguely reminiscent of burnt pork-remained in his nostrils, and he had the sensation that something was trying to crush him.

  Then the force-or the emotion, or whatever it had been was gone, as quickly as it had arrived. In looking around him, the priest realized that no one else had felt it. Everyone else was returning to his duty.

  Slowly the priest regained his breath. His heartbeat slowed to its normal pace. He attributed the incident to his own personal trauma over what he had seen, what he had smelled. What he had endured these past months with Gary. He told himself that in the future he would prefer to comfort a thousand terminally ill people on their passage to Heaven than witness one more execution of a man destined in the opposite direction. He wondered if he could broach the subject with his bishop without implying that he was somehow unfit for his full duties.

  These thoughts followed the clergyman as he quietly lowered his head and walked to the prison parking lot.

  Outside, when the announcement was made of Ledbetter's death, the two camps maintaining vigils reacted predictably. Some of the capital punishment opponents cried. The “Fry Gary” camp cheered. Later that morning, Gary Ledbetter's vital organs were “harvested” for transplants. The rest of the prisoner's remains were buried in a local cemetery that afternoon.

  That might have been the end of it.

  But it wasn't.

  About a month after Gary Ledbetter had been executed, Father Trintino was gardening behind his parish house. Late July. A Saturday. He had been working all morning, another bright, hot day.

  All of a sudden, Father Trintino was aware of a strange feeling, not too distant from the one he had felt on that horrible morning of June 6 at the state prison. A sense of oppression, bordering on paralysis. But moreover this time, the priest felt there was a set of eyes upon him.

  Father Trintino looked around. Then he froze. He saw, or thought he saw, a man standing about twenty feet from him, facing away. The man was of medium height and fair haired. He wore battered jeans and a torn yellow T-shirt.

  Father Trintino felt his skin crawl. Then the man in the yellow shirt turned. The priest was sure that it was Gary Ledbetter. He would know that face-those blue eyes!-anywhere. Slowly, a hoe slipped from the priest's hands and fell.

  The vision, or the man, or whatever it was, said nothing. It-Gary-only smiled while a bolt of fear overtook Father Trintino.

  The priest leaned down to pick up the hoe. He took his eyes off the vision, and then looked back.

  Whatever the priest had seen, it was now gone. Trintino quickly told himself that he had been imagining things. There was no one anywhere near him. The priest quickly set his hoe aside and went into the parish house. There he had a glass of cold water and a piece of fruit. When he looked out at the garden, he was relieved not to find anyone.

  So, what had he seen? Where had it gone? And, even more challenging, from where had it come?

  About an hour later, Father Trintino walked back to the rectory, the vision still preying upon his mind.

  He ate in silence. During this evening and the days that followed, he went through his duties by following habit rather than any inspiration.

  He mentioned this sighting to no one. Lesser visions had caused priests to be temporarily relieved from their duties. And Father Trintino was happy in Florida. If only he had seen Christ, he mused, it could have been considered a Revelation. Instead, a vision of Gary Ledbetter was something much darker.

  Then, as days passed, as weeks went by, the thought of the vision receded, as did the threat of another one.

  Father Trintino never saw Gary Ledbetter again. Which was just fine with him. Gary still preyed upon his conscience in too many ways. Nor was Ledbetter ever too far from his thoughts. But the truth was, Father Trintino had seen him too many times already.

  *

  Uneasily, Frank O'Hara slept.

  Fitfully, he dreamed.

  From somewhere, a restless spirit addressed him.

  Ask yourself; what is your greatest fear?

  Of what are you truly afraid? What have you done that could return to you to shatter your life? What do you fear the most?

  In his dream, O'Hara drifted. He experienced a strange sense of floating, unlike any that had ever come previously. He also had the sensation of being before a large, unopened gate, poised on the threshold of some unprecedented experience.

  The voice came again. Silken. Slithery.

  Tell me your special terror, Detective Frank O'Hara, and I'll show you something far, far worse.

  From somewhere, a long distance away, there was laughter. Manic. Demonic. Insane.

  But let us not dwell on your terrors too much. Let us not, because we each know what inevitably will happen.

  O'Hara turned abruptly in his sleep. Then there was a hand on his shoulder in the dark. A firm hand. A man's hand. In his closed bedroom where there should have been no other living, breathing human being.

  O'Hara bolted upright in his bed. His eyes flashed open. With both of his arms, he swiped at the hand that he had felt on his shoulder. He flailed at it, forcing it away.

  But he couldn't find it. Had it been there at all? He was sure that it had. He groped for a bedside lamp and lit up the room. He scanned an empty, quiet place, presided over by all of his familiar objects.

  There was also an echo in the room and in his ears. The same sound that had been in his throat. A reverberation from his heart. His own scream, the one that he had ridden up out of his nightmare.

  If it had been a nightmare. If it hadn't been reality.

  Who the hell knew any more? These things, these black terrors while he slept, were so damned frequent now. And over this hot summer, particularly over the past few weeks, these horrors were growing more intense.

  He sat up in bed, his heart kicking in his chest. His bedclothes were wet with perspiration. It was August 1993. Detective Frank O'Hara of the New Hampshire State Police was half scared to death and didn't even know why.

  At least, not exactly why.

  His eyes remained open in the empty bedroom. The dull red light of the clock radio said 4:47 A.M. It was either very late at night or very early in the morning, depending on one's point of view. O'Hara alternated between the two theories. Sometimes from minute to minute.

  O'Hara heard something and froze.

  Downstairs a creak sounded within the woodwork. Like someone taking a cautious step on old floorboards. Or maybe it was the wood of the old house-O'Hara's home dated from the 1880s-reacting to summer humidity.

  O'Hara rose from bed and listened. There was another creak. He reached to the automatic pistol that he always kept an arm's length from where he slept. In case he ever needed it in a hell of a hurry. A nine-millimeter security blanket.

  O'Hara should have felt safe. But lately, and with increasing intensity, he sensed that he wasn't safe. There was something out there. Something seeking him. Stalking him. But who? Or what?

  O'Hara was a tortured man. One beset by shadows. By questions. By the uncertainties of the past and the future, not to mention the insecurities of the present.

  And he was recently tortured also by phantoms, particularly in the black hours before dawn. Not always. But often enough. Like right now.

  Almost twenty years as a police officer, he mused. Two decades of defending the public and now he was scared to death.

  He lay the pistol across his lap. Subconsciously, his hand fumbled around a night table for a cigarette. Then he realized he hadn't smoked for seven years. Gave it up when a close pal, also a career butt-puffer, was diagnosed with the “Big C” i
n his throat. Got planted in a cemetery four months later.

  O'Hara lay back slightly. He set the gun aside and folded his arms across his chest. In his mind, he recalled those black and white pictures of the old American West. Dead outlaws in pine coffins, their arms folded the same way, making two perfect Vs. These days, images of mortality were never far from O'Hara, either mentally or physically.

  He sighed. He felt a headache coming on and wondered if he had any more prescription painkillers. Well, maybe he'd settle for a good, stiff drink.

  He asked himself what he was afraid of. What exactly? He still couldn't place it. Yet he did recognize one thing. Within him was the secret, gnawing, gripping, accelerating fear that follows so many law enforcement professionals to the grave. The fear that out of a past so complicated and complex, so tortured and so disturbing that even he couldn't completely grasp it, out of all this would someday-suddenly!-step an old enemy to demand a moment of reckoning.

  And of course this ancient enemy would step forward in an irrational way at a vulnerable moment, a point in time when O'Hara's guard would be down.

  Like in the middle of a dark August night. While O'Hara slept.

  O'Hara turned on a second lamp in his bedroom. He lay in his bed and let his gaze travel around the room. He listened to his heart pound. The heartbeat was settling now. But O'Hara could feel its vibration through the mattress of his bed.

  His eyes attempted to close again. They tried to find some semblance of peace. But there was none. No sooner had Frank O'Hara started to drift off to sleep than the unwelcome voice was back, a serpentine voice that existed in the dim area between sleep and wakefulness.

  Hell is a very personal thing, the voice told him. Same as fear. So I’ll ask you once again, Frank: What is it that scares you the most?

  “I don't know!” The voice was a man's. Loud. A blurting shout. O'Hara's.

  His eyes flickered open again. His body shook and he breathed hard. More sweat upon his face and chest. He knew that he had been talking in his sleep.

  He glanced at the clock radio by his bed. 4:52 A.M. Outside of his house, the New Hampshire countryside was quiet. So was the rural road that passed his front door. Fact was, except for some of the local wood mills that worked around the clock, the entire region slept.

  A long minute passed. Then another. O'Hara turned off his room lights. 4:54. A.M.

  He turned over in his sleeplessness. He sighed. No one in the room to hear him. Or so he thought. What about the hand he had felt on his shoulder?

  A vivid dream? Or had there really been something? Or someone?

  Nonsense, he told himself. Utter nonsense. He was alone in his bedroom; he was sure he was alone.

  Somewhere in the distance, probably a mile or two away, an airplane travelled the sky. O'Hara focused on the sound of the aircraft engine. The mechanical rumble was almost reassuring in its ordinariness.

  He turned again, bunching up the pillow, trying to settle in for comfort.

  Crazy thoughts in his half-sleep. Disturbing thoughts. More feelings than tangible ideas. An uneasy sense that something was very wrong. And very dangerous.

  He wondered from what dark world did these ideas ascend.

  Downstairs, anguishingly, there was another creak on the old floorboards. Just loud enough to accelerate O'Hara's pulse rate again.

  Hey! Was it the floorboards? Or did he have an intruder?

  “What’s going on?” O'Hara whispered to himself. He would have to go have a look.

  He picked up the pistol and checked the clip. Yes, it was loaded. He always kept it loaded.

  He moved through his bedroom to the hallway. He glanced toward the two other rooms on the second floor of his home. The rooms looked undisturbed. He didn't bother with them.

  He walked slowly down the steps to the front hall of the house. He held his gun aloft as he walked.

  Another creak downstairs in the living room. So be it, he told himself. He'd have a confrontation.

  He moved as quietly as he could, but the wooden steps moaned under his feet.

  He arrived at the base of the stairs. Then he was at the living room door, his pulse racing. He slid his hand into the room and found the wall switch. He threw on the light.

  The room was quiet. No one there. O'Hara stood very still, listened and kept watching. Nothing at all.

  Only one thing in the room was moving. There was a walnut rocking chair which O'Hara had picked up a few years earlier at a flea market. It was a comfortable rocker, but off balance. Sometimes, on the uneven floor, it could move slightly by itself.

  Like right now. O'Hara's heart raced a little when he saw the motion. The rocker had a suspicious look to it-that gentle easy sway that a rocker would have when someone has just left it. O'Hara put his hand on the chair to stop the motion. The rocker came to a halt and remained still. O'Hara lowered his pistol.

  A strange odor was in the air. Yet he couldn't place it. It was something foul and repugnant, and he knew it from somewhere else. A dead rodent decomposing somewhere within a wall?

  No, he told himself. This was an odor with a bad association. He sniffed and tried to find it a second time. But strangely it was gone.

  A moment passed. O'Hara was quickly convinced that he had imagined the smell.

  He sighed, to ease his own anxiety. Then he studied the room a final time. He convinced himself that his fears were foolish. He clicked off the light and walked back upstairs to his bedroom.

  He returned to his bed and sat down on the edge of it.

  A stillness remained upon the house. Eerie more than peaceful. An image came to him. The stillness was like the moment of silence that precedes a scream. He felt beads of sweat break anew on his brow, and buried his face in his hands.

  His whole body ached. His eyes were so tired they stung. His nerves felt like they had been rubbed raw with sandstone.

  But worse-much much worse-Frank O'Hara felt his sanity slipping away from him. Midway through his life, events didn't make sense any more.

  Yet he knew that he needed help. He knew he had to start pulling things together. He had to protect his own rationality.

  In his head, he had to create order out of events where there was no order.

  Recently, he had found great but temporary solace in alcohol. A nice, comfortable belt here and there. To summon up courage. To get his eyes open for the day. To summon the confidence to go to work. It wasn't a get-drunk type of thing. It was just that a little nip here and there helped him cope.

  There was a half-expired pint of bourbon on his dresser. Old Crow. O'Hara opened it. He took a heavy sip and replaced the bottle. He turned on his radio. All he could find was some damnable soft-rock station from Boston. He felt like shooting the radio.

  What he really could have used was some jazz. Or some of his favorite: Sinatra. When it came to music, when it came to a way with a song, Sinatra owned the place and everyone else just paid rent.

  Yeah, Sinatra. The “Other” Frank. But no station played O'Hara's type of music through the night. Another small touch of isolation for a man who was isolated in many large ways.

  No wonder cops have so many heart attacks, O'Hara said to himself. No wonder cops turn to drink so often. You get to a certain age, you've seen too much, you know too much, you can't make sense of a damned thing. And you're all alone.

  He set the bottle back on the dresser and went to his bedroom window, the one in the front of the house that overlooked the driveway. He leaned on the windowsill.

  It was past five in the morning now, the radio in the background gently playing music that he hated, but he couldn't deal with silence any more. Friends would have called this insomnia, combined with a general orneriness. A doctor would have talked about an attack of nerves, about free-floating anxiety waiting to settle.

  O'Hara called this neither of those. He called it the inevitable. The time when the moment of reckoning was due. But with what? With whom? Himself? An event? Who?

&nbs
p; He stared out of his window at the night. Dawn would soon break, and O'Hara would wait for it.

  “Help,” O'Hara muttered aloud. “God damn it! I got to have some help.”

  He looked back to his dresser, then moved to it.

  He found the bottle of bourbon again and this time skipped the niceties. He drew a nice, long belt of it, then a second one. He felt the warm, reassuring surge that the booze so generously gave. Yet the glow of the alcohol was still upon him while he fumbled through the top drawer of the dresser.

  He found what he was looking for. A slip of notepaper from state police headquarters.

  Upon it, in his own handwriting, was the name and address of a woman he had asked about within his department.

  Dr. Julie Steinberg. A clinical psychologist specializing in wacko cop cases.

  Dr. Julie. That's what some other cops called her. Professional trust combined with informality. She had a telephone number and an address in Nashua. Some members of O'Hara's department had felt the need for counseling or treatment of depression. She had been helpful to many of them.

  O'Hara had inquired about her name and number. A week earlier, a friend had given both to him.

  These nights couldn't go on like this, O'Hara knew. Nor could his drinking. It was one vicious circle: He needed the booze to soothe his bankrupt nerves. But eventually there was a rebound effect, where the booze would only soothe his nerves until it started to rattle them by itself. At those times, the last thing he needed was another drink, which was exactly what he wanted.

  There had even been some D.T.'s in his career battle with the bottle. Once, following a long undercover stint not long after his wife had left him, he had attempted to drink himself to sleep. Instead of bringing sleep, drunkenness played upon him. As he lay on his bed, he envisioned a large red crab at his feet. The crab crawled up his body, across his bare chest and down his throat as O'Hara screamed for help. No help came. He found himself at the foot of the steps the next morning, bruised and bleeding from a fall, his head pounding as if someone had slammed a car door on it.