“How long ago was this, Len?”
Leonard leaned over to Kevin, asked his faithful partner what time they’d been at Pamela Bergin’s place. He whispered back, “About two-thirty.”
“Two thirty this afternoon.”
“Shit, Len...Sparke was probably putting the knife to his shrink at about that time.”
Leonard’s pulse raced. He eyed the tape recorder, realizing that many of the answers pertaining to Delaney’s murder would be revealed once he pressed ‘play’. “So what’s happening over there? Did Sparke murder Pamela?” Kevin’s face paled at Leonard’s words.
“We don’t think so. She’s missing. Her place is empty, her car is gone. We’re checking out the neighbors right now, but it doesn’t seem like anyone heard anything.”
“Any signs of forced entry?”
“No.”
“What about blood?” Leonard mouthed she’s missing to Kevin, who shook his head and rubbed his cheeks with concern.
“No...why? Len, did she say anything I should know about?”
“No, I’m just, well, we felt that she was definitely hiding something, most likely to protect Sparke. What it is, I have no idea. We had no time to query her further because we were keeping a tail on Sparke. Other than that, there’s really nothing.”
Reese hesitated, spoke to someone in the room with him, then came back. “Len, you don’t need me to tell you how important this is. We have a brutal murder on our hands, with no idea where our primary suspect is. I repeat...I need you to think. Is there anything she said that’s even close to being pertinent, something that might indicate where she could be heading?”
Leonard tried to recall as much of his conversation with Pamela as possible. “She said that Richard had lied to us, and that she wasn’t at his place this morning. She also told us that Sparke suffered from depression and anxiety, which we can confirm with the files we took from Delaney’s office. She took down my number and said she would call me after six, but I haven’t heard from her. Probably won’t, based on what you’re telling me. Other than that, she gave no indication, or hint, as to where she might be heading.”
Reese said, “Sparke fled the doctor’s office about three. He must’ve come here soon thereafter, picked up his girlfriend, then took off in her car. It’s past seven right now. They could be anywhere.”
“Are you going to check out his wife’s place now?”
“Yeah, that’s next on the hit-list. George is at his condo looking for blood. We should hear from him later tonight. So far, there’s nothing in from the troops.” There was another moment of muffled talk as Reese spoke with someone on his end. When he came back he asked, “What have you got on your end? Anything new?”
“Nothing that helps our case.”
Distracted by the goings-on at his end, Reese said, “If I find or hear anything else, I’ll call you.”
Len said, “Thanks, Captain,” but Reese had already hung up. “Pam’s missing.”
“He took her?”
“It appears so, although my guess is that she went willingly.”
“This is getting really confusing now.”
“And complicated. Try not to think about that, though. Let’s get some answers, okay?”
“Yes, sir.”
Leonard leaned over and pressed ‘play’ on the recorder. The two cops leaned forward as Delaney began asking a hypnotized Richard Sparke some very interesting questions.
Answers
‘What is your name?’
‘Richard Sparke.’
‘How old are you?’
‘Thirty-five’.
‘We’ve had this conversation before, Richard, no?’
‘Yes, we did. Earlier today, in fact.’
‘That’s right, about an hour ago. But the only difference here, Richard, is that now you remember everything about your life, your past. The amnesia, it is all gone. All those memories that have faded from your past have now returned. Can you see them coming back to you?’
A silence ensued at this point, Leonard and Kevin listening intently to the hiss emanating from the tinny speaker. Kevin was about to say something when a rather pained-sounding Richard said, ‘I remember...oh...my...God...I can see it all. It’s like a movie playing on the walls of my mind. I can’t believe it. This is actually happening. I can actually recall many things about my past.’
‘Tell me, Richard. What do you see?’
‘Well...I’m...I’m in a house. It feels really weird. Although the memory of this house seems clear, I don’t think I’ve ever been here before. I’m with Samantha, my wife. And Debra. Oh, my princess Debra! She looks so beautiful, and her hair, it’s so long! She’s about four years old...about the same age she is when she visits my dreams. We’re seated around a table, eating dinner.’ More silence. Richard made a gasping sound. ‘It’s gone.’
‘The house?’
‘Yes, my family too.’
‘Where are they?’
‘I don’t know. Just gone. I’m in a car now. I’m driving on a road.’
‘Tell me about it.’
‘Like before, I seem to know where I am, where I’m going, but this is a road I’ve never traveled before.’
‘Do you know how to drive?’
Richard laughed. ‘Of course I do. Wow, this is a nice car. Red and shiny. There are a bunch of text books on the seat next to me. I’m wearing a sweatshirt with Greek letters on it.’
‘Fraternity letters. You must be in college.’
‘Yeah, I am. I’m on my way to class.’
‘So you remember being in college?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘What university do you attend?’
‘I’m a senior at Kent State’
Another silent moment, the faint sound of Delaney scribbling in his notebook. Suddenly, sobbing fills the tape. Leonard and Kevin peer at each other, looks of confusion painting their faces. Hearing this tape was truly fascinating, but frustrating, as they realized coming to any kind of explanation would be way out of their league.
‘I-I can see myself in an alley. I’m sitting on the floor, next to a dumpster, hidden in shadows. I’m filthy, I smell horrible. I’m...Jesus...I’m injecting my vein with a needle. It relieves the pain.’
‘Heroin?’
‘Yes...I’m tapping the vein, the yellow juice is in my blood now. Yesss.’ Instantly Richard sounded like a different person, his voice deeper, raspier as if victimized by countless cigarettes. Moans of pleasure replaced his cries.
‘A relief it is then, to quell your addiction?’
‘For now, man. But it won’t last long. I’m outta dough, and the big man ain’t got no more juice for the kid. That’s me, heh heh.’
‘You sound like a different person, Richard. Why is that?’
His drug-addict voice disappeared, only to be replaced by a stately sounding individual, one clearly educated. ‘I’m many different people...and they’re me. But we’re not one. We exist beside ourselves in levels previously unknown to common man. It’s all a matter of...of...’
‘Of what, Richard? Tell me how it is that all these people exist inside you.’
‘I can’t tell you.’
‘Yes, you can, Richard. I assure you, your secret is safe with me.’
‘It’s safe with no one. I’ve discovered that already. The experiment is a mess right now.’
“Experiment?” Kevin asked out loud, hurriedly opening the notebook.
“Shhh,” Leonard indicated with an urgent finger across his lips.
Silence. Notes being scribbled. Then, ‘What experiment is that?’
A hiss filled the tape, for so long that Leonard thought it might have run out. Just as he looked to see if the tiny cartridge wheels were still turning, Sparke said, ‘What was that?’
‘What was what, Richard?’
‘I thought I saw something. A flash. A light.’
“Holy shit!” Leonard swore, leaning forward and stopping the tape.
&nb
sp; “What’d you do that for?”
“Did you hear what he just said?”
“Yeah, that he saw a light...wait a second, didn’t Sparke say that he saw a camera flash or something like that when we were questioning him this morning?”
“Damn right he did. When we was sitting at the kitchen table.” Leonard got up, went to a filing cabinet against the wall and started rifling through the drawers.
“What are you doing? We were just getting to the good part.”
“If memory serves me correctly, Kevin...” He pulled a manila envelope labeled ‘Sparke’, walked over and emptied the contents onto his desk. A few completed data forms and a cassette tape labeled ‘Sparke Interview’ spilled out. “There’s something I’m very curious about. But it needs to wait until we’re through here. Go ahead, finish the tape.”
Kevin shrugged his shoulders, then pressed ‘play’.
‘A light?’
‘Yes, a blue light’.
With the sudden force of a lightning strike, Richard yelled out as if in great pain. He immediately started grunting, as if straightjacketed and trying desperately to escape. Leonard could hear Delaney begin a recessive countdown in an agitated attempt to bring Richard out of his hypnotic state. Soon thereafter, Delaney simply started yelling ‘Richard! Richard! Wake up!’, but apparently his struggle to do so failed. Richard yelled out again, and Delaney grunted just as a loud thump sounded, suggesting the doctor had been thrown to the floor. Delaney called out Richard’s name feebly, as though weakened and in pain, then quieted as a high pitched whining noise filled the tape.
“What the hell is that?” Kevin asked.
Then, amidst the tone, they heard a voice. Not the doctor’s. Nor Richard’s. But that of a small child’s, a girl, perhaps: ‘Daddy’.
They could hear Richard saying, ‘Debra, honey...it’s me. Daddy’, a pause, some grunting and shuffling, then, ‘Honey...what’s wrong?’
“Jesus.” Leonard felt dizzied, his thoughts at once going to Delaney’s earlier taped discussion with Richard about paranormal phenomena and the possible presence of poltergeist activity. “Could the doctor have had it right? Could Richard actually be plagued by ghosts?”
This time it was Kevin’s turn to silence his partner. “Listen.”
The little girl screamed, but it was cut off abruptly, sounding as though the tape had been cut. Just the same, the whining noise subsided, leaving the room in eerie silence. Finally, the quiet was broken with the pained whisper of the doctor trying to get Richard’s attention. ‘Rich-ard...Rich-ard...Can you hear me? I-I can’t move...Oh my God, where did you get that...?’
There was a shuffling of feet, then a horrible gasp of fear, that coming from the doctor. Leonard could hear Richard grunting, as if exerting himself, Delaney then making a noise and saying, ‘What in God’s name...who are you...?’
A swishing sound could be heard, metal parting air and the meeting of blade against soft flesh, plus the sinking of escaping air as Delaney’s last breath escaped his trachea. The two cops leaned forward, ears inches from the player as they absorbed the horrible silence, the possible rhythm of blood furiously erupting from Marcus Delaney’s throat. Then, the soft squish of a footstep upon the blood-soaked carpet. Thereafter, the breathing, what sounded like two people in the room whose breaths heaved madly at the unfolding event, one from adrenaline, the other due to fear. Each, sounding exactly the same.
Soon, a voice fell forth. Richard Sparke’s voice. But, spoken as if directed at Sparke himself.
‘It’s showtime, Sparke’.
The tape ran out.
Leonard and Kevin sat in silence, staring at the player. After what seemed an eternity, they both leaned back at the same time, as if the knots of tension in their bodies had given way, enough, at least, to allow them this small comfort. “There is a third person,” Leonard eventually stated, weakly convinced. “I heard them both breathing after the doctor was killed.”
“Couldn’t it have been the doctor himself?”
“No...you heard what George Washburn said. One fell swoop, and the doctor was silenced.”
“So who is it then? And where’d he come from?”
“Damned if I know.”
The phone rang. Repeat performance from earlier, both cops nearly leaping from their seats. “I gotta get a grip,” Kevin said, wiping the sweat from his face.
“We both do.” Leonard picked up the phone. Before he had a chance to identify himself, Captain Reese’s voice shot through in a blaze of wrath. “Leonard, we’re at Samantha’s Sparke’s house. I suggest you get your ass over here right now. She’s been butchered.”
Supremacy
Nothing in his life could have prepared him for the shock of being struck on the head at that moment. Richard crumpled back, fully overrun, his body slamming into the frigid water. He had no freedom, nor strength, to rise up for air; the pain felt like iron weights pinning his body down. In an instant, his attacker was upon him, strong hands gripping his throat. They felt familiar to him, and even though he identified the unfolding event as real, Richard still prayed for this installment of horror to be yet another dream; in this moment of desperation he mentally summoned his mother to come whisk him away from the sinister threat at hand, something he’d unsuccessfully attempted many times in the past.
But this was the waking world, and here she didn’t come. The hands pulled him up, allowing him only the slightest moment of air. Hammers blasted his head where the gun had made contact, and amidst the icy chill he could feel the warmth of his own blood trickling down his face. The man in black was playing some hideous game with Richard, with a goal to see him suffer, keep him conscious for as long as possible and make him undergo every conceivable punishment for as long as the planned course of action played out. The hands slammed Richard’s face back into the frigid waters. Under water, he could still feel the gun in his weakened grasp, his finger aimlessly seeking out the trigger. Finally, he found it. Fired it. Water and silt exploded in a harmless spray. The hands went from his neck to his hair, pulled him up, dragged him out of the water to the raised edge of land. The man in black gripped Richard’s wrist, twisted his arm across his upper back until the pain sent him to his knees in agony. He pulled hard on Richard’s hair, lifting him off the ground, Richard’s toes kicking at the muddy earth.
“Drop the gun, Sparke,” he said, the frighteningly familiar voice just inches from Richard’s ringing ears. Richard could feel the warmth of the man’s breath against his neck.
The man in black jerked Richard’s arm. The pain was excruciating, it ran like electricity to all parts of his jerking body. He struggled for strength, his eyesight doubling as the torture hit unbearable levels.
“I could snap your arm in two with one quick jerk. Shall I? Shall I do it?” He tugged a little harder. “But you might die too quickly. And that would be an anticlimax to something I’ve been waiting so long to do. Uh-uh, my friend...I’m gonna drag your death out long and hard and make you experience pains you never thought possible.”
Richard felt his mind go blank. Even though the man in black dominated Richard, he still managed to clutch the gun, knowing that he’d make himself do so until he blacked out--which, given his blurring sights, might happen soon. He attempted to pull the trigger, but his finger slipped away. The gun dangled, two fingers barely gripping the handle.
Then, as if his entire life had just slipped away, the gun fell to the ground.
The man in black eased his grip on Richard’s arm, then wrestled Richard around to face him. The shock of the moment was quick, but no less terrifying, no less startling-- terrifying because the man in black had removed his mask to reveal Richard’s mirror image to him, a duplicate countenance bathed in the cool blue moonlight, his very features staring back at him with eyes as dark as coals, lips wet with hunger. It was a stunning moment for Richard, gazing at him for the first time in the real world, every contour of his face, every exact freckle and imperfection present,
making it a truly unreal situation--yet one physically discernible, a position Richard never once sustained beyond the barriers of his odd dreamworld. Quickly, in his pioneering mindset, he once more attempted to imagine this entire scenario as a concoction from a dream. But the pain was too real, the shock of the moment much more afflicting than any nighttime ordeal he’d ever encountered. The only distinctive characteristic present in his twin nemesis’ countenance was the evidence of hatred, of some chemically-induced inclination that forced this man to conduct himself in such an ultra-aggressive, violent manner.
The situation turned from terrifying to startling in a matter of seconds. Richard called every last bit of strength and fortitude he could muster, pulling away in vain effort from the tight grasp of the man in black. He managed to free an arm and spin around, tugging his attacker across a small area of mud as he tried to escape. He couldn’t break free, but the man in black’s footing slipped upon the cold wet metal of Richard’s dropped pistol. In this chaotic moment, with the man in black off-balance, Richard spun back around, brought his head forward and slammed it into the eye socket of his nemesis’s skull. Richard was immediately dazed from the impact of flesh and bone. The world spun around him. Blinding light besieged him. Still he did not let go. Instead he threw himself forward as the man in black tipped back, his entire body weight on top as they both slammed to the ground.
Richard reached behind, groping blindly for his gun. The man in black had done the same, only stretching for the rifle he apparently placed down prior to gripping Richard’s head. The cold metal of the pistol slid into Richard’s grasp first. He grabbed it, aimed it, but all too late as his adversary sent a swift accurate kick into his wrist, reintroducing the pain there. It fluttered from his hand and landed unseen, six feet away in the darkness. Richard sucked in a deep breath, and with this came the bit of strength he needed to whirl sideways, out of the man’s grip. The man in black crawled through the mud for his rifle, which was now a good five feet behind him. In this time, Richard remembered--and felt--the screwdriver in his front pocket. He dug into his pants and pulled it out, gripped it as best he could despite the mud and water on his hands, then gathered as much power as possible to bring the blade down onto the back of the man’s thigh. It tore through the fabric of his clothes, went an inch deep into his flesh. Richard locked his hands together, pulled it out and stabbed repeatedly at the same spot, the blade finally sinking all the way to the handle. The man in black howled pure agony as blood spurted from the wound. The warmth of it was satisfying on Richard’s hands.
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