If It Bleeds

by Stephen King

  “By then I’d read about Carolyn H. in Dr. Morton’s articles. I tried to reach out to you with Dr. Lieberman—made a trip to Boston to see him, which wasn’t easy. I knew that even if you hadn’t recognized Ondowsky for what he was, you would have good reason to believe my story if you heard it. Lieberman called your guy Morton and here you are.”

  One thing troubles Holly, and very much. She says, “Why now? You’ve known about this thing for years, you’ve been hunting it—”

  “Not hunting,” Dan says. “Keeping track would be a more accurate way to put it. Since 2005 or so, Brad has been monitoring the Internet. In every tragedy, in every mass shooting, we look for him. Don’t we, Brad?”

  “Yes,” Brad says. “He’s not always there, he wasn’t at Sandy Hook or in Las Vegas when Stephen Paddock killed all those concert-goers, but he was working at WFTV in Orlando in 2016. He interviewed survivors from the Pulse nightclub shooting the next day. He always picks the ones who are most upset, the ones who were inside or lost friends who were.”

  Of course he does, Holly thinks. Of course. Their grief is tasty.

  “But we didn’t know he was at the nightclub until after the school bombing last week,” Brad says. “Did we, Grampa?”

  “No,” Dan agrees. “Even though we checked all the Pulse news footage as a matter of course during the aftermath.”

  “How did you miss him?” Holly asks. “Pulse was over four years ago! You said you never forget a face, and by then you knew Ondowsky’s, even with the changes it’s always the same, a pig face.”

  They look at her with identical frowns, so Holly explains what Bill told her about most people having either pig faces or fox faces. In every version she’s seen here, Ondowsky’s face is rounded. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot, but it’s always a pig face.

  Brad still looks puzzled, but his grandfather smiles. “That’s good. I like it. Although there are exceptions, some people have—”

  “Horse faces,” Holly finishes for him.

  “Just what I was going to say. And some people have weasel faces… although I suppose you could say weasels have a certain foxy aspect, don’t they? Certainly Philip Hannigan…” He trails off. “Yes. And in that aspect, I bet he always has a fox face.”

  “I don’t understand you.”

  “But you will,” Dan says. “Show her the Pulse clip, Brad.”

  Brad starts the clip and turns the iPad to face Holly. Again, it’s a reporter doing a stand-up, this time in front of a huge pile of flowers and heart balloons and signs saying things like MORE LOVE AND LESS HATE. The reporter is beginning to interview a sobbing young man with the remains of either dirt or mascara smudging his cheeks. Holly doesn’t listen, and this time she doesn’t scream because she doesn’t have the breath to do it. The reporter—Philip Hannigan—is young, blond, skinny. He looks like he stepped into the job right out of high school, and yes, he has what Bill Hodges would have called a fox face. He is looking at his interview subject with what could be concern… empathy… sympathy… or barely masked greed.

  “Freeze it,” Dan says to Brad. And to Holly: “Are you all right?”

  “That’s not Ondowsky,” she whispers. “That’s George. That’s the man who delivered the bomb to the Macready School.”

  “Oh, but it is Ondowsky,” Dan says. He speaks gently. Almost kindly. “I already told you. This creature doesn’t have just one template. He has two. At least two.”

  13

  Holly turned off her phone before knocking on the Bells’ door and doesn’t think to turn it on again until she’s back in her room at the Embassy Suites. Her thoughts are swirling like leaves in a strong wind. When she does power up, to continue her report to Ralph, she sees that she has four texts, five missed calls, and five voicemail messages. The missed calls and voicemails are all from her mother. Charlotte knows how to text—Holly showed her—but she never bothers, at least when it comes to her daughter. Holly thinks her mother has found texting insufficient when it comes to crafting a really effective guilt trip.

  She opens the texts first.

  Pete: All okay, H? I’m minding the store, so do your thing. If you need something, ask.

  Holly smiles at that.

  Barbara: I got the movies. They look good. Thanx, will return.

  Jerome: Maybe have a line on that chocolate Lab. In Parma Heights. Going to check. If you need something, I’m on my cell. Don’t hesitate.

  The last one, also from Jerome: Hollyberry.

  In spite of all she’s learned at the house on Lafayette Street, she has to laugh. And she has to tear up a little, too. They all care for her, and she cares for them. It’s amazing. She’ll try to hold onto that while she deals with her mother. She already knows how each of Charlotte’s voicemails will end.

  “Holly, where are you? Call me.” That’s the first.

  “Holly, I need to speak to you about going to see your uncle this weekend. Call me.” The second.

  “Where are you? Why is your phone off? It’s very inconsiderate. What if there was an emergency? Call me!” The third.

  “That woman from Rolling Hills, Mrs. Braddock, I didn’t like her, she seemed very full of herself, she called and said Uncle Henry is very upset! Why aren’t you returning my calls? Call me!” Big number four.

  The fifth is simplicity itself: “Call me!”

  Holly goes into the bathroom, opens her notions bag, and takes an aspirin. Then she gets down on her knees and folds her hands on the edge of the tub. “God, this is Holly. I need to call my mother now. Help me to remember I can stand up for myself without being all nasty and poopy and getting into an argument. Help me to finish another day without smoking, I still miss cigarettes, especially at times like this. I still miss Bill, too, but I’m glad Jerome and Barbara are in my life. Pete, too, even though he can be a little slow on the uptake sometimes.” She starts to stand, then resumes the position. “I also miss Ralph, and hope he’s having a nice vacation with his wife and son.”

  Thus armored (or so she hopes), Holly calls her mother. Charlotte does most of the talking. That Holly won’t tell her where she is, what she’s doing, or when she’ll be back makes Charlotte very angry. Beneath the anger Holly senses fear, because Holly has escaped. Holly has a life of her own. That was not supposed to happen.

  “Whatever you’re doing, you have to be back this weekend,” Charlotte says. “We need to go see Henry together. We’re his family. All he’s got.”

  “I may not be able to do that, Mom.”

  “Why? I want to know why!”

  “Because…” Because I’m chasing the case. That’s what Bill would have said. “Because I’m working.”

  Charlotte begins to cry. For the last five years or so it has always been her last resort when it comes to bringing Holly to heel. It no longer works, but it’s still her default position and it still hurts.

  “I love you, Mom,” Holly says, and ends the call.

  Is that true? Yes. It’s liking that got lost, and love without liking is like a chain with a manacle at each end. Could she break the chain? Strike off the manacle? Perhaps. She’s discussed that possibility with Allie Winters many times, especially after her mother told her—proudly—that she voted for Donald Trump (oough). Will she do it? Not now, maybe never. When Holly was growing up, Charlotte Gibney taught her—patiently, perhaps even with good intentions—that she was thoughtless, helpless, hapless, careless. That she was less. Holly believed that until she met Bill Hodges, who thought she was more. Now she has a life, and it is more often than not a happy one. If she broke with her mother, it would lessen her.

  I don’t want to be less, Holly thinks as she sits on the bed in her Embassy Suites room. Been there, done that. “And got the tee-shirt,” she adds.

  She takes a Coke from the bar refrigerator (damn the caffeine). Then she opens her phone’s recording app and continues her report to Ralph. Like praying to a God she can’t quite believe in, it clears her head, and by the time she fini
shes, she knows how she’ll go forward.

  14

  From Holly Gibney’s report to Detective Ralph Anderson:

  From here on, Ralph, I’ll try to give you my conversation with Dan and Brad Bell verbatim, while it’s still fresh in my mind. It won’t be completely accurate, but it will be close. I should have recorded our talk, but never thought of it. I still have a lot to learn about this job. I only hope I get the chance.

  I could see that Mr. Bell—the old Mr. Bell—wanted to go on, but once that little bit of whiskey wore off, he couldn’t. He said he needed to lie down and rest. The last thing he said to Brad was something about the sound recordings. I didn’t understand that. Now I do.

  His grandson wheeled him away to his bedroom, but first he gave me his iPad and opened a photo stream for me. I looked at the pictures while he was gone, then I looked at them again, and I was still looking at them when Brad came back. Seventeen photos, all taken from videos on the Internet, all of Chet Ondowsky in his various

  [Pause]

  His various incarnations, I guess you’d say. And an eighteenth. The one of Philip Hannigan outside the Pulse nightclub four years ago. No mustache, blond hair instead of dark, younger than in the security camera photo of George in his fake delivery uniform, but it was him, all right. Same face underneath. Same fox face. But not the same as Ondowsky. No way was he.

  Brad came back with a bottle and two more jelly glasses. “Grampa’s whiskey,” he said. “Maker’s Mark. Do you want a little?” When I said no, he poured quite a bit into one of the glasses. “Well, I need some,” he said. “Did Grampa tell you I was gay? Terribly gay?”

  I said he had, and Brad smiled.

  “That’s how he starts every conversation about me,” he said. “He wants to get it right out front, on the record, to show he doesn’t mind. But of course he does. He loves me, but he does.”

  When I said I felt sort of the same way about my mother, he smiled and said that we had something in common. I guess we do.

  He said his grandfather had always been interested in what he called “the second world.” Stories about telepathy, ghosts, strange disappearances, lights in the sky. He said, “Some people collect stamps. My grampa collects stories about the second world. I had my doubts about all that stuff until this.”

  He pointed at the iPad, where the picture of George was still on the screen. George with his package full of explosives, waiting to be buzzed into the Macready School office.

  Brad said, “Now I think I could believe in anything from flying saucers to killer clowns. Because there really is a second world. It exists because people refuse to believe it’s there.”

  I know that’s true, Ralph. And so do you. It’s how the thing we killed in Texas survived as long as it did.

  I asked Brad to explain why his grandfather waited so long, although by then I had a pretty good idea.

  He said his grandfather thought it was basically harmless. A kind of exotic chameleon, and if not the last of its species, then one of the last. It lives off grief and pain, maybe not a nice thing, but not so different from maggots living off decaying flesh or buzzards and vultures living off roadkill.

  “Coyotes and hyenas live that way, too,” Brad said. “They’re the janitors of the animal kingdom. And are we really any better? Don’t people slow down for a good long look at an accident on the turnpike? That’s roadkill, too.”

  I said that I always looked away. And said a prayer that the people involved in the accident would be all right.

  He said if that was true, I was an exception. He said that most people like pain, as long as it’s not theirs. Then he said, “I suppose you don’t watch horror movies, either?”

  Well, I do, Ralph, but those movies are make-believe. When the director calls cut, the girl who had her throat slashed by Jason or Freddy gets up and grabs a cup of coffee. But still, after this I may not…

  [Pause]

  Never mind, I don’t have time to ramble off the subject. Brad said, “For every clip of killings or disasters that Grampa and I have collected, there are hundreds more. Maybe thousands. News people have a saying: If it bleeds, it leads. That’s because the stories people are most interested in are bad news stories. Murders. Explosions. Car crashes. Earthquakes. Tidal waves. People like that stuff, and they like it even more now that there’s cell phone video. The security footage recorded inside Pulse, when Omar Mateen was still rampaging? That has millions of hits. Millions.”

  He said Mr. Bell thought this rare creature was only doing what all the people who watch the news do: feeding on tragedy. The monster—he didn’t call it an outsider—was just fortunate enough to live longer by doing it. Mr. Bell was content to watch and marvel until he saw the security camera still of the Macready School bomber. He has that memory for faces, and he knew he’d seen a version of that face at some act of violence, not that long ago. It took Brad less than an hour to isolate Philip Hannigan.

  “I’ve found the Macready School bomber three more times so far,” Brad said, and showed me pictures of the fox-faced man—always different but always George underneath—doing three different stand-ups. Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Illinois tornadoes in 2004. And the World Trade Center in 2001. “I’m sure there are more, but I haven’t had time enough to hunt them out.”

  “Maybe it’s a different man,” I said. “Or creature.” I was thinking that if there were two—Ondowsky, and the one we killed in Texas—there might be three. Or four. Or a dozen. I remembered a show I saw on PBS about endangered species. Only sixty black rhinos left in the world, only seventy Amur leopards, but that’s a lot more than three.

  “No,” Brad said. “It’s the same guy.”

  I asked him how he could be so sure.

  “Grampa used to do sketches for the police,” he said. “I sometimes do court-ordered wiretaps for them, and a few times I’ve miked up UCs. You know what those are?”

  I did, of course. Undercovers.

  “No more mikes under shirts,” Brad said. “We use bogus cufflinks or shirt buttons these days. I once put a mike in the B logo of a Red Sox hat. B for bug, get it? But that’s only part of what I do. Watch this.”

  He pulled his chair close to mine so we could both see his iPad. He opened an app called VocaKnow. There were several files inside it. One was labeled Paul Freeman. He was the version of Ondowsky who reported the plane crash in 1960, you remember.

  Brad pushed PLAY, and I heard Freeman’s voice, only crisper and clearer. Brad said he had cleaned the audio and dropped out the background noise. He called that sweetening the track. The voice came from the iPad’s speaker. On the screen, I could see the voice, the way you can see soundwaves at the bottom of your phone or tablet when you tap the little microphone icon to send an audio text message. Brad called that a spectrogram voiceprint, and he claims to be a certified voiceprint examiner. Has given testimony in court.

  Can you see that force we talked about at work here, Ralph? I can. Grandfather and grandson. One good with pictures, the other good with voices. Without both, this thing, their outsider, would still be wearing his different faces and hiding in plain sight. Some people would call it chance, or coincidence, like picking the winning numbers in a lottery, but I don’t believe it. I can’t, and I don’t want to.

  Brad put Freeman’s plane-crash audio on repeat. Next he opened the sound file for Ondowsky, reporting from the Macready School, and also put that one on repeat. The two voices overlapped each other, turning everything into meaningless gabble. Brad muted the sound and used his finger to separate the two spectrograms, Freeman on the top half of his iPad and Ondowsky on the bottom half.

  “You see, don’t you?” he asked, and of course I did. The same peaks and valleys were running across both, almost in sync. There were a few minor differences, but it was basically the same voice, although the recordings had been made sixty years apart. I asked Brad how the two wave-forms could look so similar when Freeman and Ondowsky were saying different things.

&n
bsp; “His face changes, and his body changes,” Brad said, “but his voice never does. It’s called vocal uniqueness. He tries to change it—sometimes he raises the pitch, sometimes he lowers it, sometimes he even tries a little bit of an accent—but he doesn’t try very hard.”

  I said, “Because he’s confident the physical changes are enough, along with the changes in location.”

  “I think so,” Brad said. “Here’s something else. Everyone also has a unique delivery. A certain rhythm that’s determined by breath units. Look at the peaks. That’s Freeman punching certain words. Look at the valleys where he takes a breath. Now look at Ondowsky.”

  They were the same, Ralph.

  “There’s one other thing,” Brad said. “Both voices pause on certain words, always with s or th sounds in them. I think at some point, God knows how long ago, this thing talked with a lisp, but of course a TV news reporter can’t lisp. He’s taught himself to correct it by touching his tongue to the roof of his mouth, keeping it away from his teeth, because that’s where a lisp happens. It’s faint, but it’s there. Listen.”

  He played me a sound byte of Ondowsky at the middle school, the part where he says “The explosive device may have been in the main office.”

  Brad asked if I heard it. I asked him to play it again, to make sure it wasn’t just my imagination trying to hear what Brad said was there. It wasn’t imagination. Ondowsky says, “The explo… sive device may have been in the main of… fice.”

  Next, he played a sound byte of Paul Freeman at the 1960 crash site. Freeman says, “He was thrown from the rear section of the plane, still on fire.” And I heard it again, Ralph. Those tiny pauses on section and still. The tongue touching the roof of the mouth to stop the lisp.

  Brad put a third spectrogram on his tablet. It was Philip Hannigan interviewing the young man from Pulse, the kid with the smudged mascara on his cheeks. I couldn’t hear the young man, because Brad scrubbed his voice out along with all the background noises, like sirens and people talking. It was just Hannigan, just George, and he could have been right in the room with us. “What was it like in there, Rodney? And how did you escape?”