For a moment, he thought that he had seen someone staring back at him from inside the cemetery. The more he thought about it, the more he was able to remember what he just saw. It was a glimpse of something unnatural.
Whomever it was, he stood among the tombstones as still as a statue with a big grin on his face. James thought about his face. Yes. He remembered that face.
For a second, he thought he saw...
"It can't be..." He said to himself. He rubbed his eyes and searched for the figure among the tombstones again with his binoculars. He scanned the cemetery as far as he could.
For an instant, he thought he saw the victim from his last missing persons case. Yes. He remembered the face from last week. The image was seared into his mind. He couldn't remember the name, though.
James remembered that there was was a tribal tattoo that ran down his cheek and neck. And this thing out there, had the same tattoo.
"That's his name." He whispered to himself.
The thing was the gangbanger that he found in the bathtub filled with blood.
James's mind went down a road that he did not want to go.
Away he went, as he stared into the cemetery, searching for him again. But he could not spot him.
James could swear that he saw him standing in the same evening light as him. He wore an evil grin on his face and his clothes were drenched in blood. James spotted him standing in the cemetery exactly how he found him in the bathtub, with his stomach cut open and his guts falling out in large chucks. Except this time, he was standing up and his insides were spilling up, toward the sky.
"Jesse Torres was...his name." He said to himself. "Now, I remember."
There was a long silence.
As James took some time to think about Jesse, he heard a faint voice in his ear. It was as if someone were standing right behind him, floating by his ear.
"The night is coming," the voice said. And cemetery began to speak to James.
James was sure the whisper came from someone standing behind him. He turned around to look and found nothing. Then, he looked around the car and he ran his eyes up and down the sidewalk. There was no one around and he felt silly for jumping at the sound of the wind.
That's all it was...the wind.
He stared at the trees rattling above. It was just the fingers of the wind running through the trees.
He followed a dry leaf racing over a boundary of grass and concrete.
James needed to collect himself. He knew that his mind was now starting to play tricks on him. A strong wind brushed against his face and he welcomed the coolness of the night.
"The night is coming." He heard the voice, again.
"Yes. It is," James answered, as he stared at the red sky. He couldn't help answering the voice. It felt natural, almost as if the voice inside his ear, was his own.
"You really have to snap out of it," he told himself.
James thought about calling Charlene. She was always able to calm him down and make him feel normal. He thought that maybe she could come by and keep him company. He would love to see her again. Maybe, she could join him for a moonlight walk through the cemetery. Then, they could drive home together.
Maybe.
But, James couldn't stop thinking about the voice he just heard. It sounded alarming more than threatening. It sounded like the bottom of a glass jar scraping against a slab of concrete. For some reason, James felt compelled to reason with it.
It's not just my imagination, he thought.
"There's something out there. It's my gut. It's my instincts that is trying to speak to me. It's trying to tell me something, more than anything else. Maybe the Captain was right. Maybe, there is an answer here. Maybe there is something that I should have figured out, but I haven't quite put together. I just have to listen to the wind. That's all. The wind."
In a strange way, James knew that it wasn't the wind that spoke to him. It was the night. He was sure that he heard something, just below the sound of growling dogs. He just had to focus on something and on nothing at the same time. Then, the voice would speak again.
If he concentrated hard enough, the voice could be as clear as the tires of a car rolling pass or as clear as the wings of a bird taking flight above the trees.
"Snap out of it, man," he told himself. "You can't live like this." James was unsure of what to do. He owed the Captain this last case. But, he wasn't sure of this was the right way to go on this case. He felt like he was giving up on the real world.
"Can you really live a normal life like this, listening to voices that don't exist? No, not at all. I should get the hell out of here. I should just walk away, right now. Nothing is going to bring those girls back. It's over. I'm gone."
James kneeled and placed the binoculars on the roof of the squad car. He jumped down unto the street floor and grabbed a bottle of water from the cooler that he stored in the back seat. He took a drink from it and tried to clear his mind. He leaned on the side of the car and stared at the sun setting over the cemetery.
It was a beautiful sight and he was enchanted by it.
"It's over." He said to himself.
As James took a second sip from the water bottle, he could not stop thinking about the voice.
"Jesse Torres was his name."
James couldn't stop thinking about whatever it was that was trying to get his attention. The voice. Jesse. the wind. He knew that all three were really the same. And when they all came together, they all came from the same place, the night.
The sound of the street gradually disappeared. Now, there was only a slight hum that he heard. He closed his eyes and concentrated, but not too much.
Then, he heard the voice again.
"Why did they rip me apart?"
James hesitated for a moment. But, he could not keep himself from responding, to Jesse, before taking another sip of water.
"I honestly don't known why people do such horrible things to each other. How can I answer something that I don't really know the answer to. I just found you in that tub. I didn't do anything bad to you. I didn't kill you. What is it that you want from me?"
James spoke to the voice, as if he were talking to a part of himself, rather than to something outside himself or alien from him.
"Why should I care about what happened to you, Jesse. It's over. I found you and I'm done with the case."
James wished that he could be more like the other cops on the force. They were indifferent about everything that they came into contact with on the job. For the most part, they were meat heads with a license to shoot anyone that they wanted. They were the kind of guys that had no problem keeping their food down after seeing a body torn apart by wild dogs. They were the kind of guys that could walk over a murdered body and not feel a thing for the departed. They were ignorant, but blissful. They were nothing like him.
And in a way, Detective James Night envied them because he was something else that should have never been. He could sense things that others couldn't. Some people - who he was able to confide in - have said that he was a special man. Others have said that he was cursed. He didn't know whom to believe. A part of wanted to believe that he was special.
James grabbed the binoculars off the roof of the car and stared into the cemetery. He wanted to search for the thing among the tombstones again, the thing that he had seen moments before.
He wanted to believe that he was special.
James did not have to search long. Instantly, his eyes locked onto the spot where Jesse stood. The thing appeared in plain sight, unashamed of what he had become. James found him, exactly where he saw him last.
"There you are...you bastard. What do you want from me?"
Without turning away at his hideous nature, James stared at Jesse Torres who stood by an cement statue of an angel. The evening light struck the side of his face. And like before, Jesse's face was smeared in blood and his guts were spilling into the sky, without end. Organs and buckets of blood rose slowly into the sky, trailing off an
d disappearing.
"What do you want?" asked James.
"Why did they he me apart?" asked Jesse. "I did nothing wrong."
James heard the words again and he knew it was him. It was Him, Jesse Torres.
James was sure of it now. He had to be careful with how he interacted with the specter. James couldn't let his imagination run away with him.
This time James imagined Jesse mouthing the words, as he kept his eye on him through the binoculars. He saw maggots crawling in and out of Jesse's mouth. His lips were shriveled and torn, revealing his corroded teeth.
"I don't know what to tell you, Jesse. I spent the whole day looking for you. I was too late, though. But, I did my best to find you. I just couldn't find you, while you were still alive. I tried."
While looking through his binoculars, James leaned against the car and started to think about the case of Jesse Torres. He was on the case for one day. He sifted through old memories that he tried to forget.
In one day, he collected pictures and notes that he placed inside the case file of Jesse Torres. He remembered each piece of information by memory, like he did everything else.
Slowly, James went to a time, when he thought that he would never hear Jesse's name again. Then, everything changed, when he did.
It was just last week when Jesse's name had suddenly come up. A day later, James found him in a bathtub filled with his own blood.
At the murder scene, he remembered a single white tile containing a cartoonish image of a yellow duck. Blood dripped over the duck's yellow beak and onto the tile floor. He remembered looking at Jesse Torres's face in that tub. He remembered staring into death and he could here Jesse's voice come from his own dead eyes. Jesse's eyes spoke to him back then, as they did now.
"Why did they rip me apart." He asked. "Why?”
Even to this day, James was shaken up about all the circumstances surrounding Jesse's death. He never felt the same again after that day and he didn't understand why.
It was at that moment when he felt the gun in his back.
Three
Calvary Cemetery
"Do you hear her, James?" asked Brutus with a pistol, now pointed at the back of his head.
The word "Her" echoed in James's ear. He hoped that he wouldn't hear a thing, especially Her. He didn't want to even recall Her name.
Brutus was the local precinct captain for a couple of neighborhoods on the western side of Queens. One of those neighborhoods was called Sunnyside. It was in Sunnyside where James?" resided for about four and half years. It was the place where he met Her.
Brutus was a light-skinned Belizean man with a carpet of short white kinky hair. He was strong, built like an ox to tell the truth. He was stronger than James, stronger than most men half his age.
Brutus towered over him.
The whole time, James felt Brutus's eyes burrowing into the back of his head. For most of the early evening, they stared into the cemetery. They patiently stood at the black gates, waiting for the dead to dance. They stared endlessly at the cemetery as if they were waiting for the words carved on a tombstone to suddenly change.
"Hear who, Pelé?" asked James.
James referred to Brutus by his nickname, "Pelé,” to get on his good side. the real Pelé was a Brazilian soccer player who captivated the world a century ago with his agility and speed. Brutus was once a good soccer player himself and was given the nickname "Pelé.”
When Brutus migrated to the States from Belize, the nickname stuck. When he went through the Police Academy, the nickname still stuck. It stood by his side, like a good dog. The name was good and it worked well with his charismatic smile and deep voice. But, that was before, before she died.
"Hear who?" James asked again.
The sound of James's monotone voice echoed through the air and it came up, just over the rattle of several oak branches. Brutus hated James's voice and grimaced at the sound of it.
James looked away from the cemetery and glanced at the old oak trees that were hardened wth time. They were like the back of Brutus's hands, where the tendons and veins crisscrossed over each other and at his knuckles.
Like the cemetery, the row of oak trees lining the street had been here for a long time. Before the concrete streets were poured down, when a single dirt road cut through a land filled with farms. James couldn't help but think about the fate of the oak tree. Eventually it would also come down. In time. The red emergency lights of the police car flashed over the row the thin detached homes that rested across the cemetery.
James looked beyond the cemetery, beyond the East River. He stared at the sun that was about to slide behind the dark skyline of Manhattan. The night was coming and there was nothing he could do to stop it.
"Don't call me Pelé, boy. You know exactly who I want you to find out there."
James remained quite.
"Come on boy, answer the question. Do you hear her or not?"
"No. I don't hear a thing out there."
"Don't lie to me James." Brutus sounded upset, like never before. He raised his voice. "Just don't, James! This isn't going to turn out good for you, if you keep lying to me. I swear to God. If you don't help me find her, I'll…”
Brutus paused before misspeaking, before saying the word, crazy. Then he went on. "Can't you understand? I want to see her again. I want to talk to her. I want you to tell her, that I love her."
Brutus's voice was deep and James believed every word that he said because his rib cage shook every time he spoke.
"I'm not lying to you. You know that. I haven't heard anything out there, since we've been standing here."
But that was a lie.
James knew that, he could get away with lying. Brutus couldn't tell what was out there and what wasn't. Brutus didn't have James's special gift and this advantage bought him a little bit of time.
This was good because James needed some breathing room to figure out a way out of this situation. Brutus was out of control, becoming more desperate and unbalanced with every passing moment. He was no longer the same calm man who spoke the Queen's English and whose voice rang with the words of Longfellow and Whitman, reciting their poems from memory, like a priest reciting the lines from a bible.
Besides, She was no longer here to talk sense into him, to talk him down. She was gone and into another world. James knew that he would have to explain to Brutus that She was gone, if he was going to survive Brutus's brush with madness.
"I know you hear something out there, James. I know it. I hate it when you lie to me. It tells me that you don't respect me."
"I'm sorry."
Brutus stuck the barrel of the gun deeper into James's spine and it hurt.
"Don’t, God damn it! Don't you know that I can tell when you're lying. It's my God damn job to know the lies from the liars. For your own sake, don't disrespect me, again. But most of all, please don't disrespect Her?"
Brutus mentioned "Her" again. Thank God he did not say her name.
"Come on, Brutus. You know that I have never disrespected her. And I never will. I loved her. You know that."
"Shut up! I don't want to hear your bullshit. Do you like making me look like a fool in front of my little girl?"
"Of course not."
"Did you just mention love? Don't make me laugh."
"But,”
"Shut up! Do you even know, what that means."
James remained quiet, as he surveyed what was out there. He looked at the cemetery, using a scope attached to a combination rifle and double barrel shotgun. It was like something out of a video game. Brutus emptied the weapon out before handing it to him and shoved it in his arm. Brutus thought that the scope would aid the search for Her.
"Don't make me ask you again or I'll have to ask a different way. Do you hear Her or not?"
Of course, James heard something out there. There was at least one person being buried inside that cemetery everyday. The chances of him hearing something out there were very good. And Brutus knew i
t, too. In fact, in that very moment James heard several voices roaming out there. He picked out one and it sounded like the scratched up voice of an old man, mulling to himself in a state of confusion. But for the most part, he ignored the old man's voice and anything else that was out there. Besides, none of the voices were "Hers". She was gone. He was sure of it.
James stood on the police car, wearing a slim navy blue trench coat and a black tie over his wrinkled white shirt. He was 38 years old at the time of the murders. He was not a bad-looking man and he appeared younger than he really was. He wore his thick black hair, neatly combed to one side. His face was smooth, except for the scars over the right side of his cheek and forehead.
A silver badge dangled over his chest. From time to time, he grabbed on to it. He fidgeted with it, as if he wasn't sure the piece of metal on his chest was real. Since he arrived to the City, He had always wanted to become one of New York City's boldest. However, the badge wasn't his. It was Hers. Brutus made him wear it because he thought that the badge could help James communicate with Her. However, it didn't matter. James didn't even bother to tell him that part.
"Come on, boy. Tell me. Can you hear anything out there or what? You have to find her, man."
"Why?"
"So, she can lead us to her killer."
"Why?"
"What do you mean why? Stop asking why, God damn it! She's my daughter. We have to do this for her mother, for her brother...for anyone who has ever loved her. And believe me, there were a lot of people that loved her. A lot more people loved her than you."
"I loved her."
"I don't want to hear that bullshit. I told you, already. For Christ's sake, my daughter deserves justice, not your empty words or promises. For all the things that you can supposedly do, you just stood by. You couldn't even do the most important thing, that a man should be able to do for the woman he loves. You couldn't protector her."
Brutus's words stung. James loved "her" more than anyone, even her own family. And he hated it when anyone said different. But, he calmed down and he tried to reason with Brutus as best as he could.
The Dead Never Die Page 2
