Visions of Death

by B. T. Lord

  Their only foray outside the cocoon of grief and pain was when they attempted to reach out to the Reid and Angleton families. To offer whatever solace they could. But it was too soon. The wounds were too deep. Perhaps in time the agony would scab over enough to allow some sort of reconciliation. For now though, they were asking too much. Seeking absolution that was impossible to give. They had no choice but to quietly retreat back into their own private hell.

  Although the investigation was officially closed, there were still too many questions for Ellis to completely let it go. Questions he wasn’t sure he’d ever get the answers to, but that continued to nag and pull at him.

  As expected, Rob found the remains of tea leaves in DeeDee’s stomach, along with a large amount of sedatives in her system. Unlike Mallory however, he also found the presence of alcohol in DeeDee’s bloodstream. Neither the tea leaves, sedatives or alcohol were found in Richard’s body, further confirming that he was the killer.

  When Rob examined Richard’s corpse, scratch marks were found on his face and hands that fit the theory he’d been pushed or had fallen into the shrubs. The islanders lulled themselves into a sense of security by convincing themselves it was DeeDee who had pushed him into the bushes in an attempt to get away. Ellis wasn’t so sure, but with all the evidence pointing to Richard as the murderer, he kept his opinions to himself.

  What troubled Ellis the most was the location of DeeDee’s body. No matter how many times he looked at it, he could find no logical explanation for Richard placing her in his father’s fishing trawler. Even if he’d managed to avoid suspicion as a killer, why sabotage his dream of taking over the business by using the trawler as a makeshift grave?

  Over the days and weeks, the case continued to slowly eat away at Ellis. He couldn’t forget the scene of seeing Richard’s body in the pond. What could have compelled the young man to walk into the water and simply kneel down, as if in some macabre way he was beginning for forgiveness?

  Equally puzzling was Rob’s inability to find cause of death. Richard hadn’t been drugged. He had no needle marks on him. There were no contusions on his head to indicate he’d been injured when he fell or was pushed into the shrubs. He’d been in excellent health. One could argue he’d succumbed to the elements, but he hadn’t been in the water long enough to suffer from hypothermia. Rob hypothesized that at the temperature of the pond, it would have taken between fifteen minutes to a half hour before Richard lost consciousness. Yet Ana was certain her technicians had passed by the area where Richard was found no more than five minutes before he was discovered. And after losing consciousness, how had he managed to remain upright in a kneeling position?

  Then of course, there was the shadow man. Despite countless attempts to come up with a reasonable explanation, including the possibility of little sleep, little food and pressure to solve the case, Ellis still came back to ground zero. Maybe he’d dreamed up the shadow man. But had DeeDee dreamed him up too? How was it possible that she’d described the same exact creature he’d seen without her knowing he’d seen it himself?

  With all these questions roiling around in his head, Ellis felt compelled to tie up at least one loose end in a plethora of loose ends.

  Two weeks after the funerals of DeeDee, Mallory and Richard, he found himself seated in Dara’s living room.

  She was curled up on the couch opposite him. “See? I told you you’d solve this. You’re very good at what you do. We’re all lucky to have you.” She took a sip from her coffee mug. “So what brings you over?”

  “I know you did a reading for John. Did you also do readings for Mallory, DeeDee and Richard?”

  The expression on her face abruptly changed. A moment ago, she’d been friendly and smiling. Now suspicion crept into her eyes and her body stiffened.

  “What does it matter? The case is over. Richard killed Mallory and DeeDee.”

  “There are always loose ends at the end of every case. This is just one of them.”

  “I can’t imagine what that has to do with what happened.”

  “Let me be the judge of that.” He watched as she fidgeted with the mug she held in her hands. “It’s a simple enough question. You either did readings for them, or you didn’t.”

  “I can’t say.”

  “Dara, you’re not a priest and this isn’t a confessional.”

  “I may not be ordained, but it’s still private. Mom always told me you never divulge what happens during a reading. Up until the day she died, she kept telling me that. It’s up to the client to talk about the reading, not me.”

  “Unfortunately, with the exception of John, the other three are dead.” She silently stared down at her mug. Remembering what Chandra had told him when the investigation began, he said, “Let me tell you what I think. Then you can confirm or deny. Your family has been shunned for generations because of what people considered your uncanny ability to look into the future or, more importantly, uncover their deeply held secrets. However, whenever anyone needed a healing or a reading, they’d make their way to your family, usually under the cover of night. Despite the passage of years, that’s still the way, isn’t it? Instead of traveling out to the cottage you grew up in, they now come to this studio apartment.”

  She hadn’t looked up from her mug, but her breathing had increased.

  “I think when Mallory found out she was pregnant, she panicked. She may have treated you like garbage, but when she needed you, she overlooked that and came to see you. There is no record of her calling you, so I can only assume she came to the coffee shop and asked if she could see you. I admit, I’m a little baffled by that. Why would you see someone who’d always treated you so badly?”

  “She was scared,” Dara whispered.

  “Did you see the pregnancy?” She nodded. “Did you see who the father was?”

  “I – I didn’t look. I didn’t want to look.”

  “What did you see?”

  Tears glistened in her eyes. “I saw nothing.”

  “What do you mean you saw nothing?”

  “I saw nothing!” She closed her eyes and tried to calm herself. “That had never happened to me before. I always see something, even if it makes no sense. But when I looked at Mallory, I saw black. It was like standing in a room with no lights on. It wasn’t until she died that I realized what had happened. I couldn’t see her future because she had no future.”

  “What was her reaction when you told her that?”

  A sad smile tugged at her mouth. “She went off the deep end. She started calling me a fake and a cheat and a bunch of other pretty nasty names. She didn’t know why she wasted her time with me. She took back her money and left.”

  “How long before her death did she come to see you?”

  Dara shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “The day before she died.”

  “Did you do readings for DeeDee and Richard?” She gave a barely discernible nod of her head. “When did that happen?”

  “Richard called me the night he and DeeDee went missing. Even though it was close to midnight, he insisted I see him and DeeDee. After the way he’d treated me, I was too afraid to refuse.”

  “What did he want to know?”

  “If DeeDee knew about the pregnancy. He didn’t believe her and brought her over here to see what I would say.”

  “I thought he didn’t believe in your abilities.”

  “I thought so too. But maybe since I had no stake in any of that, I was sort of a last resort.”

  “Did DeeDee know?”

  She shook her head. “She didn’t.”

  “How did DeeDee appear to you? Did it look as though she was there against her will?”

  “She was upset, but not for the reasons you think. She was mad because Richard wouldn’t believe her. When the cards indicated she hadn’t known about the pregnancy, she actually laughed in his face and said, ‘I told you so’.”

  “What was Richard’s reaction?”

  “He wasn’t happy. He still accused he
r of being a nosy busybody.”

  “How long were they here for?”

  “About twenty minutes.”

  “Did they say where they were going when they left?”

  “No. Though as I was closing my door, I heard DeeDee tell him that now that she’d done what he wanted, it was his turn to honor their agreement. They closed the downstairs door and I didn’t hear anything else.”

  “What did you do afterwards?”

  “I had a bad headache, so I took some aspirin and went to bed.”

  Ellis stood up. “Do you mind if I look in your cabinets?”

  She looked up for the first time since the conversation had begun and gave him a puzzled look. “Yeah, sure. Go ahead.”

  Ellis walked into the kitchen area and slowly checked out her cabinets and small pantry area. When he was done, he turned back to her.

  “Do you drink tea?”

  “No. I prefer coffee or hot chocolate.”

  “Do you serve tea to your clients?”

  Dara looked surprised at the question. “My readings generally go from a half hour to sixty minutes. People are usually so busy asking questions or getting clarification that it would be a waste of time and money for me to serve them tea that they probably wouldn’t drink anyway.”

  Ellis returned to his chair and sat down. “Why didn’t you tell me any of this?”

  “By the time I found out what happened to DeeDee and Richard, everyone was declaring Richard the killer. I figured the case was closed, and it didn’t do any good to bring up their readings. Same with Mallory. Though, if you recall, I did tell you about the dream. I honestly didn’t think the readings had anything to do with what happened afterwards.”

  “It would have definitively established that Richard and DeeDee were together the night they both died.”

  Dara looked away. “Oh. Yeah. Right.”

  “You lied to me, Dara.”

  She caught her breath, her heart breaking at the thought that she’d disappointed this man – the only one who’d shown any concern for her. “I’m so, so sorry. I never meant to. Really, I didn’t.”

  Ellis stood up. “It was very kind of you to give readings to people who hated you.”

  Dara’s tenuous hold on her emotions slipped. “I wanted to be seen. Can you understand that? I wanted them to know that I wasn’t a freak or a nobody. I just wanted them to recognize that.”

  It was the end of April, and the temperatures seemed to be turning towards spring. But Old Man Winter couldn’t resist one last blast of stormy weather to remind the Coffins who was in charge.

  After returning to Eagla for his bi-monthly check-in, a sudden tempest burst over the islands, pummeling it with high winds and icy rain. Realizing it would be suicidal to try and return to Sarke Island, Ellis made the reluctant choice to spend the night.

  After securing a room at the Paradise Cove Hotel, he tried to evade the feeling of being cooped up by going down the street to Fiske’s Pub and grabbing a beer.

  The winds were howling as sleet barreled against the windows of his SUV. Expecting the pub to be fairly empty, he was surprised to find it filled with many of the local fishermen, getting in a last pint before heading home in the severe weather.

  He’d barely ordered his beer before he found himself pulled into playing a friendly game of darts with a trio of retired fishermen. One of them, a grizzled yet still hearty 89-year-old by the name of Jacob Hoote soon became so inebriated, he could barely stand. With the storm raging outside, Ellis didn’t trust that he’d be able to drive the few short miles to his small cottage that lay on the outskirts of town.

  “Come on, Jacob,” he said when the game wrapped up. “I’ll take you home.”

  “I’m fine,” he slurred.

  “It’s nasty out there.”

  “Can’t be any worse than the typhoon of ’38. Now that was a corker! Thought for sure we were all gonna drown when the seas opened up and tried to swallow us up whole.”

  Ellis half listened to the old man ramble on about the Great Hurricane of 1938 as he helped him on with his slicker. Using his own body to block the worst of the winds howling up the street from the harbor, he quickly got Jacob into the front seat of his SUV and buckled him in before jumping into the vehicle and throwing on the heat full blast.

  The drive was slow due to the sleet and icy conditions. The old man mumbled incoherently under his breath as the sour reek of beer filled the inside of the SUV.

  “I knew you’d never find the killer,” Jacob suddenly said in a clear voice. “It would take a miracle to find that thing.”

  “What are you talking about?” Ellis said as a gust of wind suddenly blew against the side of his vehicle and almost pushed him off the road.

  “It’s been looking after that family for centuries. Doesn’t let anyone mess with them. They do, they die. It’s always been that way. They made a pact with the devil when they brought that blackness into our world. I thought it would end with her. She was more reasonable than the rest of her people. Insane, that’s what they were. Warped with hatred and vengeance for things they have only themselves to blame for.”

  Ellis wondered if, in his inebriated confusion, Jacob was reciting details of a horror movie he’d seen and believing it was real. Yet there was something in what he said that struck a chord.

  “Jacob, are you talking about the Clemons?”

  The old man frantically waved his hands in the air. “Don’t say it! Don’t say their name if you know what’s good for you. I intend to die in my own bed, not in some ditch somewhere. And not from fright either. Oh no, not me. If you’re smart, you’ll forget this whole business. Those young people are dead and buried. Let it be.”

  He fell into a silence that Ellis couldn’t penetrate. Arriving at Jacob’s small shack, it was all the deputy could do to walk around the side of his SUV, get the door open, haul Jacob out and walk him to his front door.

  It was unusual for locals to lock their doors, so Ellis was able to swing the door open, get Jacob inside and deposit him into the nearest arm chair. He started to take off the old man’s soaking wet slicker when Jacob suddenly clamped his bony hand on Ellis’s arm.

  “Beware, Deputy. There are things on this island you can never hope to understand. Let them go. Your life will depend on it. The shadow man won again. He always wins and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

  He stared at Jacob, but the old man had retreated back into his silent shell.

  After removing his coat and shoes, and stoking the woodstove, Ellis let himself out of the house.

  The cold and ice hit him in the face, ripping his breath away. He hurried to his SUV that he’d thankfully left running, the heat coursing over him like a warm, fuzzy blanket. He was about to put the vehicle in reverse when his cell phone rang. To his surprise, he saw it was Greg Rhys calling.

  “Hello, Greg,” he answered. “How are you doing in this storm?”

  “Still have power, so that’s a plus. Listen, I’d heard you decided to spend the night on the island because of the storm, is that right?”

  “The rumor was correct. I’m just dropping off Jacob. He had a bit too much to drink and I didn’t trust he’d make it home alive in this weather.”

  “You’re not far then. Can I entice you to come over? I have some single malt scotch I bought in Scotland two years ago to keep the cold away.”

  “For a glass of that, I’d go through an arctic blizzard. I’ll be right there.” He paused, then added in a more serious tone, “Is everything alright?”

  But the doctor had already hung up.

  Curious why Rhys would be inviting him over on such a bad night, he drove the few miles that ordinarily would take him a few minutes, but that now took him almost a half hour over the increasingly icy roads.

  He saw the large rambling Victorian building in the distance, its windows illuminated with lights that were very welcoming in the cold, frigid tempest.

  He parked the SUV near the front door
and just as he approached, the door swung open and Rhys appeared.

  “Awful night, isn’t it?” he asked as he took the deputy’s wet coat and hung it up on a row of pegs near the front door.

  “Abby and the kids are on the mainland visiting her mother, so we have the house to ourselves. Let’s go into the living room where we can have that scotch.”

  The interior was beautifully handcrafted with richly carved mahogany rosettes lining the ceiling. Ellis knew the house had been constructed in the mid-1800s for a sea captain who’d done well for himself and wished his wealth reflected in his home.

  They entered the wide living room where Rhys indicated that Ellis sit near the marbled fireplace. As Ellis sat in the high back chair, Rhys poured them both a drink. After handing Ellis the glass, he sat down opposite him and lifted the glass.

  “Iechyda da!” Rhys said before taking a gulp of the scotch.

  “What does that mean?” Ellis asked as he felt the soothing liquor cascade down his throat.

  “It means ‘good health’ in Welsh. My grandparents spoke it and I learned a few words here and there whenever we visited.” He smiled. “My grandfather liked his liquor so that phrase was one I learned very early on.”

  The two men settled into a companionable silence. Ellis knew there was a reason the doctor had asked him out that night and it had nothing to do with sharing a good scotch. As he’d learned throughout his career, people weren’t comfortable with silence. Sometimes it was better simply to say nothing and let the other person fill in the empty space. The technique had worked many times in getting someone to say something they may not ordinarily have said. He therefore sat back in his chair, allowing the heat to seep into his cold bones while he cradled the glass of scotch in his hands. After a few moments, Rhys broke the silence.

  “How do you like living on the Coffins?”

  “It has its challenges.”

  He laughed. “Now that’s an understatement if I ever heard one. These people—they have good hearts and good intentions. But whether it’s the harsh weather, or the difficult lives their ancestors led in order to survive on these desolate rocks, it’s like pulling teeth to get them to admit anything.”