Never Speak: A Mystery Thriller (The Murderous Arts Series)

by John Manchester

  “And you’re one of the sanest people I know.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I just wrote about my experience.” He’d been exhausted a moment ago, but telling her about it had him pacing the gallery. He told her about hallucinating Karl as a big cat.

  “No wonder you’re upset. I hallucinated other stuff. Except, in a sense, that wasn’t a hallucination. You saw the real Karl.”

  “I just figured out that he sent me on that nightmare trip so he could show up the next day and I’d see him as my savior. And, aside from that lapse, it worked.”

  “He did the same thing to me. It’s a classic torture technique. Pull someone’s fingernails out and they’re wanting Mommy so badly that they fall into the arms of the very monster who did it to them.”

  Ray shuddered. “What I don’t get is, why did he bother to do it? We were already willing to go to the ends of the earth for him.”

  “Good question.”

  Ray was headed in the direction of the front door when the letter slot squeaked, and a Chinese menu flopped onto the floor. He scowled. It was the third one this week. “Hold on a sec.” He ran out into the street to catch the guy, but he was gone. Fast sucker. He came back inside. “Sorry.”

  “Here’s my take. Near the end, we still considered him all-powerful. But he didn’t see himself that way. In order to be our proper guru, he buried his own insecurities deep. But they inevitably started coming out.”

  He was shaking his head. “What insecurities?”

  “Ray. I saw behind his mask too. Not what you saw, not a wild animal. It was different for us women.”

  He wanted to know where she was going with this, but her voice was tightening up. He didn’t push. She said, “So his methods got more extreme as he tried to hold onto us, even though there was no need to do it.”

  “Like that encounter group stuff.”

  “Oh, God, I’d forgotten that. ‘Describe your last orgasm.’ Karl had one real talent, aside from music of course. He had a brilliant eye for other people’s flaws. He saw them and exploited them. He could smell fear, like an animal. And he instinctively knew everyone’s worst one.”

  Worst fear. He’d called Lorraine hoping to discharge the crummy feeling writing about The Backroom had evoked. But the conversation was getting him more worked up. He stomped upstairs to make coffee. No. That would just wind him up further. He leaned against the kitchen counter and closed his eyes. “I don’t know about worst fear, but here’s one: the fear that I don’t belong. That I’m on the outside, looking in on the human race.”

  “Now that you say it, I can see it. And I’m sure Karl could too.”

  “But how would he…” The memory came, and his face got just as hot as it had then. “Near the end, after I’d been faithfully with him for years, he said, ‘You’re still a stranger.’ He pointed to someone who’d come a few years after me, a ‘younger person.’ He said, ‘She’s no stranger.’ And I felt so small.”

  “Bingo.”

  “How about you?”

  “Oh, I know my worst fear. That I’m just a piece of shit.”

  “And how did Karl use that?”

  A pause. She didn’t sound like her confident self. “That I can’t tell you. I’m sorry. I’m never telling anyone. I have to go.”

  Ray ate lunch. It was early afternoon, but he was done writing for the day. He bundled up and went out for a long walk. The wind sliced through his coat. It started to snow.

  Back home, he sat up on the couch. The guitar headphones had come. He tried them out. They were better than nothing, but no stack of Marshalls. Not even a Fender Pro Reverb. The truth was, he wasn’t in the mood for music.

  He surfed the internet but wasn’t in the mood for that, either. He set the laptop on the floor, watched it snow. He wasn’t interested in seeing every flake today. They all looked quite the same. And gravity was pulling him into a slouch, then horizontal.

  He thought of Lou and his eyeballs and smiled, gazing over to the cylindrical jar in the corner. It was almost half-full of a marble collection he had started when he was a kid. Alleys and aggies and cat’s eyes spanning the colors of the rainbow, made of clay and glass and marble itself.

  They’d been slated as the raw materials for his next art project when his muse took a hike. Aside from the marbles, all he had had was a bad idea: painting them with eyes and putting them back in the jar and titling it with some silly pun. Here’s lookin’ at you. The eyes have it. Lost your marbles, have you?

  He cringed. Maybe that’s why his muse split—she was sick of his cornball humor. He’d been meaning to give the jar to Bodine. The marbles could go in the museum category Outmoded Playthings. It would fit right in with that hoop and stick and the old playing cards.

  His eyes drifted closed, and he dreamed.

  He’s naked at the bottom of an enormous glass cylinder. Marbles the size of basketballs rain down on him. He runs, dodging the marbles, slipping on the glass. They should crash as they hit the floor, but instead make an odd clattering sound.

  He somehow avoids being hit but can’t escape the merciless gaze of these marbles. Each has an eye painted on it, glaring at him. Looking inside him, seeing his darkest secrets. His envy of Susan and love of Karl. His guilt for Bassman and obsession with Liz.

  He stops running. It’s hopeless. There’s no hiding. Something huge is out there, looking in through the torrent of marbles. Ray stares out, but it’s pitch black.

  He looks down to the great round floor. It’s pulsing, bulging in the middle. A pinprick appears, widening into a black circle. He’s standing on the Eye of God—and it can see right through him.

  He woke. Hail spit against the round window. He gazed up at it and flinched. The Eye of God, my ass. Lou and his fucking eyeballs.

  The computer pinged. Maybe that was Lou now. If so, he was a fast reader.

  Ray sat up, picked up the computer. He’d slept over two hours. It was almost four. This writing was tiring work.

  The latest email wasn’t from Lou.

  Subject: “Black cat crossing yr path.” He saw no attachment, so he opened it.

  A blurry picture of a black cat filled the screen, so black that it looked for a disturbing instant like a hole burned in the screen. The animal lay draped over a computer keyboard, asleep.

  Just this morning he’d written about Karl as a great cat. His face got hot. His legs twitched.

  The picture was captioned: IZ in yr computer, stealin yr writing.

  What was with the weird spelling? He called Bodine. “I just got this email. It refers to something I wrote just four hours ago. Someone is still getting in my computer.”

  “Forward me the email.”

  A few seconds later Bodine roared with laughter. He said, “Christ on a croissant. They’ve sicced LOLcats on you.”

  “Huh?”

  “Laughing Out Loud cats. It’s an old internet time waster: silly cat pictures with captions of what they’re supposedly thinking. Google cheeseburger and cats.”

  Ray did, coming up with a website: I Can Has Cheezburger. He scrolled down. “I’ve got it.”

  “Those kitties can’t spell for shit. Their grammar sucks too.”

  “Well, I’m not laughing out loud now.”

  “Sorry. You’re right. This is some bad shit.”

  The laptop pinged. Ray said, “Hold on. Another one just came.”

  “Send it over. Better yet, I’m coming over there. You didn’t get another brick through your window, did you?”

  “I don’t think so. I was sleeping. What the hell? I was taking a nap when the brick came too.”

  “A nasty coincidence. But I’ll be right there in case they’re up to something else.”

  Ray met Bodine at the front door. They went up and sat at the kitchen table with the laptop.

 
The subject of the second email was: “Nine minus nine equals…”

  Bodine punched it open, to a photo of the same cat lying on the keyboard. But now there was a gash in its side and it had bled profusely over the keys. The photo was captioned: OOPSEEZ, curiosity kilt me! Careful it don’t get U 2.

  Bodine said, “Whoever did this is going to need a new keyboard.”

  The computer pinged again. Ray said, “One more.” He looked at Bodine.

  “Karl and his threes.”

  “You got that too.”

  This one contained a video, which began playing by itself.

  It showed the same cat, apparently resurrected. It played on the floor of a room that was strewn with cat toys—a catnip mouse, a ball of string. But the toy the cat was batting around was a doll’s head with black hair.

  “This video…” A little knot appeared on Bodine’s forehead, a sign of serious concern.

  “What?” Ray looked at Bodine, but his friend was looking away. What was going on?

  Bodine played the video again. His forehead relaxed, and he looked at Ray. “Never mind. I thought… It’s just a cell phone video.” He stopped it on the section with the doll head and laughed. “Your hair is still black, more or less.”

  The joke was forced at best. “I think that’s supposed to be me. Bodine, what…”

  But his friend was scrolling down and what Ray saw made him forget the strange moment.

  The video was captioned:

  Don’t Forget! I haz 9 LIVES!

  PS.

  Gotta Pussy sleepin in yr Vulva.

  Ray asked, “What the hell? That last line there is an anatomical impossibility, but what do I know?”

  “This guy—and it has to be a guy—can’t spell any better than those cats. I think he’s talking about your car, your Volvo. But hold on.”

  Bodine Googled around, then brought up a website, Uncyclopedia, and typed vulva in the search box.

  A satirical article conflated the Swedish car with the female body part. “While it’s more common for women to own one, most men would give their right arm to get their hands on a vulva.” It went on in that vein.

  Bodine laughed. Ray said, “Bodine! You’re not fifteen anymore.”

  “Sorry. I guess part of me will always be. You have to admit this is pretty funny.”

  “I don’t have to admit any such thing.” But now Ray let out a chuckle. He scrolled up to the video of a cat batting around his head and sobered right up. “You and I might be cracked up by that, but can you see Karl coming up with it?”

  “Impossible.”

  Ray said, “This is the work of a teenager or a geek.”

  “How about both?”

  “What would Karl be doing hanging with some teenager? Or geek?”

  “I can’t see it. He was definitely not into kids.”

  “Or technology. He has someone young working for him.”

  Bodine said, “Maybe he has a whole new crop of followers.”

  Ray flashed on a horrifying image of Gen-Xers, Gen-Yers, pierced, tattooed, shaved bald, or with that spiked hair, sitting in that basement, texting. No, Karl would never allow texting.

  Bodine said, “What?”

  “Some things are too horrible for words.”

  “Speaking of horrible, I just had a thought. We need to take a look in that Volvo of yours.”

  “You think he threw a brick through the windshield?”

  But Bodine was already clanking down the metal stairs. Ray followed him down and out the back door to the alley where he parked his car. He was relieved that the windshield was intact. “It’s fine.”

  Bodine stepped closer and pointed inside to the dashboard.

  Ray looked. “Fuck. That’s a black cat.”

  “A dead one, I’m afraid.”

  Ray tried the door. It opened.

  Bodine said, “You lock your car?”

  “Always. How’d they get in?”

  “Oh, easy with a Slim Jim—you know, those strips of metal cops use when you lock your keys in the car.”

  “Crooks have them too.”

  They studied the cat.

  Bodine said, “That looks like the one in the emails.”

  “Yep.” It had the same gash in its side, only now there was a knife sticking from it. And a length of barbed wire was wrapped around the head.

  Ray said, “This is a parody of my piece, ‘I’m Cross.’ The crucified rat with the scalpel in its side.” He was whispering. “You remember it?”

  “Vaguely. That’s really creepy.” Bodine lowered his voice too. It was unlike him.

  “And weird. Because my piece is a parody of a reliquary.”

  “A parody of a parody. Sounds kind of, what do you call it?”

  “Postmodern.”

  “So now we have a postmodern teenaged geek with a Slim Jim?”

  “Add clairvoyant. I sold that piece last year. How the hell would they know about it?”

  “Is it on your website?”

  “Oh. Maybe.” Bodine had designed it for Ray, but Ray never thought about it. It was just something needed for the business. He shuddered and felt exposed, and flashed on the dream, the great eyeball. “My stuff has been sitting out there where any nut could find it.”

  “Not any old nut. Mystery man. The un-Karl.”

  “You said people change.”

  Bodine shook his head and reluctantly fingered the cat. “It’s getting stiff. There’s a note under it.”

  It read: Ma kitteh died fr yr sins. Yr car’s a kitteh reliquary.

  The snow had stopped. It was cold in the car. Bodine said, “Let’s go back upstairs.”

  They sat in the kitchen with the laptop. Bodine navigated to Ray’s website and found the cross piece and a section explaining the reliquaries. “I’m going to dig down a little further with these emails. I couldn’t get much from those last ones. But those photos…”

  Bodine clicked to the first picture and pointed. “That’s a Mac laptop.”

  “Like this one. Which narrows it down to what—only a couple of hundred million people?”

  “Certain kinds of people have Mac laptops.”

  “Me, now.”

  Bodine opened the email with the video. He hit play. “That’s a big room.”

  “They all were in The House.”

  “Pause it.”

  Bodine froze the frame.

  “Go back a few seconds. What’s that red thing in the corner of the frame?”

  “The edge of something. A bed, chair? Probably shot with the same phone as the stills.” Bodine clicked back to the picture from the first email. “See this reflection in the monitor?”

  Ray saw part of a window. It was tall with a lot of panes.

  Bodine said, “Hold on…there’s another, fainter reflection here. Another window, at another angle. This is a corner room.”

  “You remember what kind of windows there were at The House?”

  Bodine shook his head. “I remember French doors downstairs. Don’t remember windows. And, the way that house is set in the cliffs around it, I don’t think any sun got to the first floor.”

  “What about upstairs?”

  “There might have been sun. I wasn’t up there …much.”

  “Me neither.” Ray looked at his friend. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  Bodine looked away and sighed. “Maybe you’re not the only one getting a little spooked by the past here. By Karl’s scene.”

  Did something happen to Bodine upstairs? But this was a rare admission from Bodine, and Ray didn’t push it.

  “I should be able to get the time from this screen shot.” He selected the top right corner and enlarged it. The corner of the shot was stamped Tues 11:17 AM. “So wherever it was taken has e
astern exposure.”

  “It was taken this morning.”

  “Or last week.”

  “No. I wrote about a black cat this morning.”

  “It’s a little after four now. So whoever did this is within a four-hour drive of here. Unless they flew.”

  “With a dead cat? The House is less than two hours from here.”

  “That doesn’t mean…”

  “I know. But it’s certainly possible.”

  Bodine studied the picture from the second email. “This one’s from a slightly different angle. There’s only one window reflection. What’s this?”

  “Fuck, that’s a face.”

  “With a camera blocking it.” Bodine enlarged it, enhanced it, but couldn’t get it any clearer. Just fingers, the camera, and part of an ear.

  “Sorry, this is above my paygrade. You need a Photoshop jock to get better than this. I installed that security package. So we can assume they didn’t get your writing off your computer. Who’s seen it?”

  “Just Lou. I emailed that section with the cat this morning.”

  Bodine groaned. “That’s it. They hacked into either his email or yours. Probably yours. What do you use?”

  “Gmail.”

  “What’s your username and password?”

  “Ray247. Password is our band plus a number. Nightcrawlers01.”

  Bodine snorted. “They just had to keep trying Rays. You could figure out the password. They haven’t been sucking files off your hard drive. They just guessed your password and hacked your email. I’m sorry. I had this picture of publishing as an old-school business, with you snail mailing what you wrote to your agent, who sent a reply back Pony Express.” Bodine typed. “I’m getting you a new password.”

  “Should I change my email address?”

  “Not unless you want to change it on your website and inform everyone you know. Let me take care of that dead cat for you—you have enough trouble right now.”

  “Thanks. What about the police?” He could throw the dope in the rafters away. He hadn’t smoked it in months. Or he could give it to Bodine to keep.