Mister White: The Novel

by John C. Foster

  “After we get this place fixed up, you’ll have to invite me over for tea,” he said, undoing the deadbolt and thumbing off the lock on the knob. “I insist.”

  Father Messina pushed the outer door open and they descended down into the snow as the fire roared behind them.

  “Look up at the stars, Martha. Do it now,” Messina said, and she did. He slid his hand from her shoulder to the side of her jaw, gently guiding her gaze still higher.

  There was no need for her to see what was coming.

  “It…it’s so beautiful,” she sobbed.

  “He made it just for you because he loves you,” Messina said, fighting her a bit as she tried to look at the apparition gliding towards them.

  “Oh, I’m so frightened,” she cried and tried to wrench away, to look upon the horror. He would not let her and held her in his powerful, workingman’s arms.

  “Look at the stars and think about His love,” he said, his voice deep with the training of years before congregations. “Do you give Him your love? Do you love God as much as He loves you?”

  “Oh yes! I love Him!”

  The sound of approaching footsteps announced the emptying of the hourglass and he held her head rigidly aloft. But for himself, Father Giancarlo Messina, born in Boston’s North End forty-eight years ago and drawn to the priesthood as a boy of seventeen, he watched the approaching wraith with defiance in his heart.

  There came a blurred moment, as if several frames of film had been removed, and the evil stood close enough to touch.

  “Our last moment is not yours,” he whispered and looked up at the sky, pressing his head alongside Martha’s.

  Shining brightly above, such beauty.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  - 1 -

  The car smelled like kitchen grease and Marlboros, and so did the driver. The radio was screaming about a highway to Hell, and Hedde closed her eyes, trying to sort out a whirlwind of conflicting emotions.

  “Better tips at R-3, but I get a shift meal at the Blue Jay, so it sorta evens out,” Amber was saying as she drove Hedde back to Uncle Gerard’s house. Officer Wannamaker had begged the favor of the bored girl after she delivered a sack of burgers for the prisoners.

  “I’m done with my statement,” Hedde had said, laying the papers on Wannamaker’s desk and studiously avoiding her father’s entreating look. “Etienne needs to be fed,” she said to her uncle, who shook his head.

  “He’ll be fi—”

  “Sophie won’t get better without food, she needs it on time. I should go while you figure this out.”

  “No,” Lewis said, but Gerard reached through the bars and patted his arm.

  “We won’t be much longer, and she’ll be fine with the dogs to watch her. She knows how to take care of herself. Just ask those two assholes.” Gerard said, jerking a thumb at the other cell.

  Hedde remembered her father’s face as he looked between her and Gerard. Cut out of their conversation, something had deflated inside him.

  Hedde had to fight down the urge to run back to her father and hold tight to him, something she hadn’t done since she was in grade school. Instead, she left without saying a word.

  “Fuckin’ song has been playing since Halloween,” Amber said, turning the station away from a commercial set to “Here Comes Santa Claus.” She took a greedy suck on her cigarette and shot Hedde a sidelong glance as if the younger girl might demand a drag. “I’m already sick of Christmas and it ain’t even Thanksgiving.”

  “Me too,” Hedde said, needing to fill the gap in conversation.

  Thanksgiving? Christmas?

  Did those things still exist somewhere?

  How could she have walked out on her father?

  Hedde scratched the side of her nose and surreptitiously wiped moisture from her eye.

  “That how they dress in New York now?” Amber asked, and Hedde shook her head. Not exactly on the cutting edge of chic herself, she was still aware of the girl’s bangs. The hairspray. The bangle earrings straight out of a music video from the dawn of MTV.

  “So it must be cool living in New York,” Amber continued. When she was introduced, the girl’s accent turned the name Amber, which was pretty in a stripper kind of way, into “Am-buh,” which wasn’t pretty in any fashion.

  “We don’t really live in New York City,” Hedde said. “It’s a small town outside of the city.”

  “Oh,” Amber said, blowing a jet of smoke up at the small opening in the window. “So it’s just like here.”

  No, never like here, the town that time forgot.

  “Yeah,” Hedde said.

  The night was an anonymous thing outside the window, and Hedde was surprised when Amber put on her right blinker and pulled her little car up and into Uncle Gerard’s driveway. The car’s headlights dragged a small part of the looming old house into view, but the rest of the unlit property was just a humped shadow against the night.

  “Creepy fuckin’ house,” Amber said, smoke tumbling out with her words. “Wouldn’t catch me in there alone.”

  - 2 -

  Creepy? No. But Hedde was aware the very moment the house became haunted.

  She could hear the clack of Etienne’s claws on the kitchen floor as she built up the fire in the living room fireplace, stuffing wads of old newspaper beneath dry pieces of wood before bringing a match to it. Her eyes watered as the paper blackened and curled inward, outlined in orange until licks of flame sprouted like spring blossoms.

  Hedde knelt before the fireplace, her face lit in flickering orange, watching with bright eyes as shadows danced on the walls. Her own shade expanded up and out as she stood, racing up the wall and flooding across the ceiling. Huge. Dark. She spread her arms and it appeared to embrace everything—the couches, the bulky block of the never-used TV and record player.

  She remembered Susie-with-a-heart telling her about the burning of witches and her lips peeled back in a grin, white teeth catching the firelight.

  “They hanged us,” Hedde said to invisible others as she picked up a stick from the fireplace and swung it in fiery loops until the flame at the tip was extinguished.

  A bark sounded in the doorway and she turned to see Etienne’s black shape beneath the arch, glittering eyes fixed on her.

  “It’s all right, boy,” she said, but he backed away when she followed him into the kitchen. She began scribbling on the floor with the charred point of the stick, muttering words she forgot as soon as they were spoken.

  The dog lunged, paws scraping at the ashy lines as he snatched the stick from Hedde’s hand and backed away, shaking it violently.

  “Stop it! Give it to me!”

  Etienne backed away, whining.

  “Then go outside,” Hedde said, pushing past the dog to open the door.

  Etienne whimpered and circled, but she pointed and, after a moment, he fled outside.

  When the old phone on the wall rang, Hedde answered it, cord stretching out behind her as she meandered back to stand over her charcoal writing. A minute passed and she hung it up without saying a word before returning to the living room where she knelt on the thick rug beside the dusty shelves and pulled the stack of board games free. Risk. Monopoly. She set them aside and lifted the third in both hands, smiling at the faded cover of the box. Mystifying Oracle Talking Board Set! Ages 8 to adult! Parker Brothers indeed.

  She tucked the box containing the Ouija board under one arm and lit a fat candle from the open fire, enjoying the sizzle of falling wax when she held it too long in the flame.

  Holding the candle before her, Hedde mounted the old staircase, following the burning will-o’-the-wisp atop the wick up into darkness.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  - 1 -

  Dave Baillie led a small group of inebriated and chastened men down the stairs of the municipal building and out into the cold, where they paused for the ritual of zipping and buttoning.

  “Colder’n a witch’s tit,” Sam Stout said.

  “How w
ould you know?” Baillie asked.

  “Know what?”

  “How cold a witch’s tit is.”

  “Fuck you. Let’s go drink.”

  “I’ll second that,” Jackie Strong said and led off with the men trickling behind him. “Ranger Rick was wicked pissed, huh?”

  “Yuh,” Baillie said. “Rightly so. We shouldn’t have egged LaChaise on.”

  “Fuckin’ Beaumont didn’t have to kick him like that.”

  Baillie stopped and looked at Strong, wondering, not for the first time, how he wound up stranded among these knuckleheads. “Wouldn’t you?”

  Stout reached the door first and they could hear the strains of Bob Seger’s “On the Road” through the door. “Hope fuckin’ Aaron didn’t burn the place down,” he said with a laugh as he opened the door and loud music flooded the street.

  They filed in, stomping and tossing coats on barstools, resuming their accustomed spots at the bar. Baillie heard what he thought was one of the guys saying, “Is that sausage?”

  Indeed, what looked to be several feet of link sausage was draped over the lazily spinning ceiling fan which spun all year long because the R-3 was one bar where a man could still smoke. He was thinking proprietor thoughts about getting the stepladder from the back room and a re-emergence of the backyard hibachi idea he had been toying with. Guys needed more beer with their dogs and hotdogs were cheap.

  “Where’s Aaron?” Strong asked.

  The insistent ring of a phone drifted from the back office.

  “Smokin’ a little bud in back?” an expert named McNeil commented, wandering over to the jukebox.

  “Goddammit,” Baillie said. “Aaron! Where the hell are you?”

  Stout wrinkled his nose. “What’s that smell?” He was leaning over the bar when the jukebox lost power and the song wound down to a halt.

  …ROOOoooaaaad.

  “The fuck you do, McNeil?” Baillie asked as the lights went out and everyone started cursing.

  “Didn’t do nothing,” McNeil was saying, and it took a moment for Stout’s frightened voice to cut through all the bitching.

  “Oh my god,” he said. “Get the light on. There’s something behind the bar.”

  In back, the phone was still ringing.

  “What?” Baillie said.

  “I think it’s Aaron,” Stout said.

  “Open the door,” Strong shouted.

  A moment later a crack of dim light from the street filtered in to create a muddy gloom. McNeil was holding the door open, trying the switch on the wall.

  “Must be a circuit—” he was saying when he was snatched off of his feet and pulled outside. The door banged shut and plunged them again into pitch darkness.

  The rustle of clothing and scraping of flints heralded the appearance of several tiny flames, pinpoints of light in the black.

  “What just happened?” Strong asked.

  “Aw Jesus,” Baillie said from behind the bar, backing up fast enough that his lighter flame went out and he slipped. “Aw Christ, that’s blood! I slipped in blood!”

  The door swung slowly open and Jackie ran over only to skid to a stop. In an oddly high-pitched voice he bleated, “You’re not McNeil,” before something bright punched through his back and splattered Stout with blood.

  Strong rose into the air as if levitating and shook like a man with palsy as he floated inside. In the moment before the door slammed closed again, Stout saw something that made his bladder release.

  “Get the shotgun.” Stout’s voice carried across the dark before he screamed.

  - 2 -

  A black wave of exhaustion crashed over Lewis and he sat heavily in the chair. He would have rolled back on the casters if Gerard had not reached through the bars and caught his lapel. Lewis looked at the other man’s outstretched arm before letting his eyes wander. Individual seconds ticked past on the wall clock as his gaze settled on the pebbled glass of the front door. He mused on how odd it was that the words FLINTLOCK POLICE DEPARTMENT stenciled on the glass read TNEMTRAPED ECILOP KCOLTNILF from the inside…

  “What?” Lewis asked.

  Why did he let Hedde go when he stayed to argue for Gerard’s release? She had every right to be angry with him, but she was his daughter. What kind of father did that? His mind was filled with billowing fog. His thoughts moving in jagged, confused lines. Had he been away so long that he forgot his most important job?

  Officer Wannamaker—not a bad guy, all things considered—had walked away from the cell and Lewis’s persistent argument for Gerard’s early release in exasperation, saying he had to “Deal with the radios.”

  The boys in the next cell had complained about the television volume, and Wannamaker had stopped by the little black-and-white set perched on a desk before slapping it with his hand. “You boys are in jail, for Chrissakes. Don’t push your luck.”

  Over at the radios, Wannamaker was heard talking about a fire at the trailer park when Gerard had motioned him to the far corner of the cell, away from the boys. Lewis rose and pushed his rolling chair over.

  “She’ll be with Cat,” Lewis said under his breath, and Gerard flinched.

  “Lew,” Gerard said. “I don’t know how to tell you this, but Cat ain’t at home.”

  “What?”

  “She left a note, snuck out in the middle of the night,” Gerard continued, watching Lewis’s expression fold inward like a collapsing tart. “Said she was going to speak to someone who could help you.”

  “There’s no one at the house?”

  Gerard shook his head. “Hedde is safe. She’s armed and I’ve taught her. And she’s got the dog. You get the hell outta here if we can’t budge Rick when he comes back over.”

  “Oh God, have you heard anything from Cat since she left?” Lewis asked.

  Gerard shook his head.

  “All hell’s breaking loose at the park,” Wannamaker said as he returned to his desk.

  He frowned down at Hedde’s statement on the desk blotter and mouthed words silently before asking, “Hedde speak German?” He held up the statement and Lew blanched as he saw HERR WEISS scrawled across the neatly printed lines.

  Wannamaker’s phone shrilled and he wondered why the call had come in on a direct extension as he reached for the handset.

  “Shit!” He exclaimed, snatching back his hand as the after image of a blue spark faded. “You see that?”

  Lewis stared at the ringing phone. “Don’t answer it!”

  “Huh?” Wannamaker gave him an odd look as he gingerly picked up the receiver and said, “Flintlock Police Department, Wannamaker speaking.”

  Wannamaker squinted, as if focusing his vision would help him understand the caller. He looked quizzically at Lewis.

  “For you,” Wannamaker said. “Bad connection. Sounds like long distance.”

  “Who knows you’re here?” Gerard asked.

  “Who is Mister White?” Wannamaker asked, carrying the wireless receiver over to Lewis.

  “Hang it up!” Lewis said.

  “What?”

  “Hang the damn phone up!”

  Wannamaker put the phone to his ear and shrugged. “Caller already did.”

  The overhead lights went out and plunged the room into darkness, the fluorescents maintaining a ghostly afterglow for a moment as the incarcerated boys began shouting and Wannamaker yelled back, “Shut up!”

  In the quiet dark, they heard sounds from outside.

  A gunshot.

  Screams.

  - 3 -

  Rick Wannamaker was very cold by this point, cold and confused in the dark of night. He shivered and hugged himself, teeth chattering uncontrollably.

  So many tears had been shed that the creases in his dark cheeks had frozen, the cracked plain of dry country after a sudden rainfall, a myriad of tributaries become veins of ice that gleamed in the moonlight, raining down so that a passerby might think his face was glowing.

  His uniform had frozen and as he walked, red bits of ice flake
d free. If he had looked behind him he would have seen a blood trail in the snow, moonlight darkening the scarlet spatters to black.

  Here comes Santa Claus, here comes Santa Claus. The damned car commercial had been using the Christmas tune since before Halloween. Since before…

  Before…

  He shook in a whole body shiver like a mink shaking off water and fell to one knee. The radio on his belt squawked at him but it was another language. Farsi. Martian. He had no idea what the words meant, only…

  A low moan slithered from his parted lips as he remembered running out the door of the police station after the two panicked boys. A sight that made his thoughts explode in static even as his foot slipped on something jellied and he was sliding down the stairs in the red waterfall of remains that were once Dickie LaChaise and Ray Childers.

  Right down Santa Claus lane…

  Wannamaker wobbled upright, internal gyros struggling to keep him on feet he could no longer feel. Up ahead he made out glowing rubies and amethysts and thought of the lights he would string on the tree this year. He no longer put up a tree at home; it felt maudlin after Gladys left. But at the department he liked to fill the place with the smell of Douglas fir and the glow of colored lights. Gladys, a purist, had liked only the tiny white bulbs. Each year, Mrs. McMahon would bring the first and second graders on a field trip from school and they would hang ornaments and strings of popcorn—eating much of it—while they sang carols.

  When the police station lights went out, Lewis had done something in the dark, some jiu-jitsu bullshit straight out of the movies, and Wannamaker found himself unlocking both cells with his own gun aimed at his considerable belly.

  The town boys panicked and fled out the front door, sounding like a herd of elephants slamming down the stairs in their work boots. And Gerry Beaumont was saying, “You have to come with us,” when Wannamaker heard the boys screaming. They had all heard it—high, terrified sounds like calves subjected to a particularly cruel slaughter.

  And he, the fool everyone called Ranger Rick, especially townies like Dickie and Ray, had started after them.