He found himself wanting another cigarette.
“How are you doing?” He asked, instantly regretting it.
She gave him a look and then shrugged, “Alright considering everything, I guess.”
Stupid. “I guess that was a dumb question.”
She gave him a look that said she agreed, but she wasn’t going to say so out of politeness. “I can’t find out how to turn on the heater in this place, so you might want to keep your coat on. I don’t even know if the heat can work, but I doubt they’d give a crap either way.” She gestured to the interior of the apartment, and drew him in. “Have a look at the beauty on the wall over here.”
Her words were punctuated by a sour tone, but he could still hear a hint of sensitivity there, a distant desperation that he knew belonged to those who were born of tragedy and pain. To those people who were made different due to the circumstance. The world seemed to pick a select few to shower it’s tragedies upon. Death seemed to be a being of habit, who visited few people often, even though he inevitably would visit all at least one time.
He stepped into the room and saw instantly what she was talking about. Standing before him was a tall and dark shadow that he had seen so many times since he had dared open the notebook that Jon had sent him.
The eyes were black and enclosing. He knew that he had seen the eyes before, the same ones that followed him in his dreams looked out of the wall at him. He felt a cold brush on his shoulder, as if they were reaching across the chasm that separated the conscious and the unconscious and were trying to pull him back again.
“Wow.” He said, staring at it.
“I know.” Sam chimed in, “Scared the piss out of me when I first walked in.” She gestured to the couch, “That’s not all he was into drawing too. Seems like he had a bit of a hobby going on that he never mentioned to me. Did he ever say anything to you?”
“No.” Clark said, “And I’m not just saying that because I’m supposed to keep that stuff secret.” He looked at the figure up and down, eyes tracing the horns that sprung out from the head. It resembled a young bull to him in some ways, perhaps it was the way that they curved away from the head. “I’ve come to see some of his work since he passed however.”
Sam tilted her head, “What do you mean?”
He lifted his hand, indicating the notebook. “He sent me this. Along with a whole box filled with a bunch of articles and pictures. Nasty stuff.”
“Why did he send it to you?”
“If you can tell me, I’d be thrilled to know.” He tossed the notebook onto the couch. Then turned to examine the shadow figure further. “I’ve been reading it though, and he has some interesting bits of information.”
Sam stepped closer to him. “Wait. How did he know to send you this?”
A pause. “I don’t know.”
“You mean that he sent this to you after…like you got this after he died?” Her voice shook a bit.
He said nothing.
“Well?”
“Yes.” The word stumbled out of his mouth. “That meant that he sent it to me before he died. In fact, he sent it from another part of the state to make sure that it reached me after he died. It had a note inside that told me that. He said something was after him. And it was going to kill him.”
“What are you talking about?” Anger rose in her voice, the hot rage only a woman could conjure. “You mean to tell me that his death was not an accident?”
“Less of an accident…well, maybe an accident of circumstance. Bad fortune.” He pointed at the notebook. “If half of what he wrote in that notebook is true, which God help me if it is, and God help me if I believe it is and it’s not, then what happened to him was far from an accident but is beyond proof to be a homicide.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Your brother was murdered. But he was murdered by something not of this world, and far beyond our control.”
“You’re so full of it.” She stomped toward him. “Just who do you think you are?”
He shrugged at her pointing finger, “I’m just the guy who’s stuck sounding crazy to you as I try to explain something that is impossible to be explained. Which puts me in a bit of a debacle, now, doesn’t it?”
She stared at him.
He continued, “So what that means is that we both have to put aside our feelings right now and figure out what kind of fresh hell this is, and try to solve it. Otherwise we let Jon die in vain and without justice. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want that over my head for the rest of my life.”
His face stung with a slap, and his hand was to his cheek before he even knew what happened. Cold green eyes stared at him, welling with tears, a single one escaping down the side of her face, and mouth set in the trench of rage that again was not attainable by men.
“I don’t know what kind of crock you’re cooking here,” She said. “But when it comes to my brother, you will not say another freaking word, do you hear me?” Her finger fell into cadence with every syllable. “I’ve had it with you and your crap. I don’t want anymore of this bullcrap being slung in my face, you got me?” She stepped closer to him.
He stared at her, and dropped his hand from his face.
“Now you tell me what is going on here, right now!”
The room grew silent and thick, as if it were covered by the slime that had been smeared on the walls of the dark corridor that he had wandered, filled with the moans and screams of the captive, desperately crying for deliverance, and the slapping of the limbs that sprung from the depths of the shadows.
Samantha was poised before him, her chest heaving with angry breath, the AC/DC logo bobbing up and down with each inhale. Her denim jacket was slid back on her arm, revealing the red rose that was tattooed on her forearm, the blood red contrasting so drastically with her skin that he wondered how he had not noticed it like he had at that moment.
He wondered what he was supposed to do. If he told her she would continue to not believe him—the idea itself was fruitless and only made him feel even more lost for ideas. The truth was too much for him to bear, how could he expect her, who had not seen what he had seen or felt what he had felt to believe he was anything short of crazy? In fact, he wouldn’t blame her if she slapped him again and had him arrested for exploiting her grief. He would have to give up his license and check into an institution himself if anyone else got wind of the theories that had come to seem so real to him in the last few days.
Clark looked at her, and took in a breath. “Providence.”
Her hand dropped, the accusing finger withdrawing into her fist and kept by her side. Her eyes still burned.
“Does that mean anything to you?” He asked, “Does it have anything to do with what you have found out here?”
Her voice was a low rumble. “Where did you hear that?”
Clark didn’t respond.
“Where did you hear that word?”
“My dead wife said it to me yesterday afternoon in my office.” He tilted his head, “Something tells me that the word means something to you.”
“What is wrong with you?” She turned away, “That freaking fat detective probably told you that in between shoving donuts into his face, didn’t he? A-and boy you thought you’d both have a good laugh about it today didn’t you? You sickos.” She turned back to him. “Where did you hear that?”
He held her gaze, “My dead wife, as she stood in my office with me while I was reading that notebook right there in my office yesterday. I’ve been seeing her in my dreams. I’ve been having them almost every night now, they’re getting worse. Did someone tell you that in a dream?”
“No.” She said, reaching over and grabbing the notebook from the couch. “Not there.”
“Where did you hear it?”
“Like I’d tell you?” She flipped open the book and turned the pages quickly. “Just so you can psychoanalyze my reaction. You probably told me that to see if I’d freaking believe you and then you’d laugh you
r way all to the loony bin.” She flipped another page, “I’ve never—”
She stopped.
Clark watched her. Her hand reached for the page and began to trace the line of a drawing. He couldn’t tell which one it was that she had turned to, but he knew it was close to the one that bore the image of his dead wife, wrapped in the sheer robe, beckoning to him to come join her in the land between the worlds where he dared not tread—save only in his dreams.
She stared at the drawing for a moment, all the way to the corner where Jon had initialed it in a handwriting that he knew was impossible to duplicate. He could also tell that she recognized it very clearly. She looked at him, eyes still wide, tears now no longer present, and then back at the drawing, and he saw the rage melt away from her face slowly. Her eyes followed it from the top to the bottom and then she folded the paper over on the spine. She pointed at him. “Jon drew this?”
He nodded.
“When did you see this? Like exactly when?”
“Just yesterday. I hadn’t opened it before then. There is a note in the front that explains what the purpose to the notebook is. Then the rest is filled with drawings and some explanations. I only read half of it, and what I could check up on, checks out. Whatever he was writing about, or gathering information on was correct. He knew what he was doing.”
She studied him, “You knew nothing about this?”
“Not until a few days ago when that package arrived at my office.”
She set the notebook down on the head of the couch, he could see that it was open to the page with the man faintly veiled by long hair in his face, holding a gun up to the page, pointing it at whoever it was who dared look into the notebook and the images inside.
“Tell me more, and we’ll talk.”
[Transcript Excerpt of Session from the Case File of Jon Morgan]
Bell: Okay, you can continue now.
Jon: Alright. I heard the thud and all. It sounded like something was dropped. My music was too freaking loud. I guess that is one thing that Mom always told me that she was dead right about, I always had the stuff too loud. Only I really could care less about my long-term hearing now. I just wish I would have done it so I could have intervened in some way.
It was when she screamed I knew something was wrong. I had heard Mom scream before. Usually when a roach had wandered into the house. She always hated those things, especially the ones that decided to start flying around the room when she whacked at it with a fly-swatter. But that scream was different. It was the kind that not even the giant bugs in some of those old science fiction movies could make happen. I knew she was hurting. Or was hurt in some way.
I ran out of my room, shouting her name. Calling for her. I think I called Sam too, I’m not sure. I can’t remember that part. My room was upstairs, and I ran down the stairs and she was yelling, screaming for me to run and hide, I didn’t know why, that didn’t make any sense to me. I mean, why in the world would she tell me to go hide? Sometimes part of me wishes that I did.
When I reached the kitchen I saw him. He was tall, his jeans were around his ankles, and he had Mom leaned over the table with a gun to her neck. He was raping her, right there in the kitchen, and he didn’t care that we were in the house. Like we weren’t even there. He didn’t care. He looked at me, and he smiled.
“You want some too, kid?” He said. He had gaps in his teeth, I’d never seen anything like him before. He was grinning, still thrusting, hurting her. Her arms were twisted around her back with his free hand. Her pants were gone, and he didn’t seem to care. I lost the ability to speak then. I couldn’t even move.
That was when Sam showed up. I felt a hand grab by shoulders and pull me back, holding a finger to her lips, telling me to be quiet. She had a level head. She was good that way. I saw she had something in her hand, it was shiny, even in the dark light that was there. I never thought about what it was she really had.
I wish I did.
[Pause in the tape]
CHAPTER FIVE
1
Clark finished the story and turned his face up to Sam, who had taken a seat on the chair at the other end of the table that was piled high with papers. He had expected her to interrupt, probably get mad again and leave the room when he reached the point of the first dream. She did not, however. Instead, she sat through the whole tale, not bothering to ask any questions but to just listen. She stared at the notebook in front of her, or at the backs of her hands that rested on the tops of her knees. He saw her tracing the lines of the rose on her forearm a few times, but she wasn’t looking at it. He supposed that it was probably a habit that developed not long after she had gotten it. She only did it in the parts of the story that involved Jon.
He spread his hands, “That’s all I have.”
She looked at him. Her eyes were only slightly narrowed, as if she were thinking of whether or not to actually believe him or to dismiss his claims altogether. He knew that it sounded crazy, he knew that it was probably the last thing she needed to hear at that point, but at the same time he felt that the only way to really help her was to tell the truth, full, bald and open. But in the end would that be enough?
“There’s more info, stuff I’ve been sorting through about what is actually going on, but I need to double check it and I don’t have any of it with me.”
She nodded.
The sun outside had long ago set, and darkness had begun to settle over the streets. The sporadic streetlights that worked in the worn-down neighborhood glowed through the slim curtains that adorned the windows. Clark knew that behind him the black figure loomed overhead, and that in the dying light it had to look far more intimidating than it had before, and much more like the shadows that lurked in his dreams at night.
It looked like it would be one of the ones following him in a dark corridor that was covered in slime while various individuals were escorted into rooms by the other shadows, pulling them into the dark practices that served God knew what purpose.
“Time for me to start up the crazy pills?” He asked.
“No.” The word was flat. “I don’t think you need to do that just yet, even though what you just told me to anyone else would sound like absolute insanity.”
“More or less.”
“So tell me this much, Dr. Bell, why on God’s green earth should I believe you?”
He hesitated. “Because you’re not believing me. I’m not asking you that, I’m asking you to believe Jon. What I’ve seen, that just verifies what he was already saying, even though really I don’t think we were quite ready to hear what he had to say.”
“And that’s supposed to make me feel better about it?”
“No.” The light shifted again as a bulb over them flickered, “But maybe it sheds some light on the subject a little bit.” He looked up, “In a manner of speaking.”
He could hear the tenants down the hall yelling about something over their television. It had been quiet until he began his story, as if they knew what it was he was talking about and were not in the mood to hear about the dreams, the shadows and the blood although he knew it was impossible for them to hear him from the distance and through the old walls. Their yelling was something about food. Someone had eaten all of the food.
“So Jon was researching some freaky stuff and it made something evil latch onto him and kill him?” She leaned back in the chair, propping a booted leg up on the coffee table.
“Yes.”
“You didn’t know about any of this until after he died when you got a box in the mail and started having some crazy dreams in the middle of the night about a priest and your dead wife?”
He ignored the calloused barb. “Yes.”
“And this all has something to do with you, me and Jon?”
A pause. “Yes.”
She leaned back a little farther.
“But it also has to do with something a whole lot bigger than us. Much bigger, and much older. I don’t know how much bigger or how much older, but what Jon dug
up has a lot more information than I have had time to digest or understand.”
“So, Jon was looking for something big?”
“No, Samantha.” Clark said, “He found it.”
A dog had joined the yelling, which was back and forth with a woman in the apartment across the hall, he couldn’t tell how old either of the people were but he imagined them to be in their middle age, settling into an old, overused couch with a blurry, hardly-functioning television. The dog, was a yipper. One of those small show dogs that some people seem compelled to own and nurture into full obnoxious adulthood, never losing their annoying yap or maturing in what they did or did not make noise about. Perhaps the dog had eaten the food.
“What did he find?”
Clark sighed, “That is a much harder question than I’m capable of answering.”
“Well how about you start at the beginning.” She lifted the booted leg from the table and crossed it over the other one, off one knee, and set her hands, both folded together on top of it, her eyes cutting into him. She was examining him, he knew. He had done it a thousand times himself, striking a pose of interest and comfort to see how people reacted against it. Normally if someone was lying, they would become hostile toward your lack of hostility. They would get defensive and inconsistent. It made for a great show when you had someone who was a big enough liar on the other end of things.
“Providence,” he said. “What does that mean to you?”
“That’s not what I said we’d talk about.”
“It’s clearly the beginning of whatever road we are really on here. Otherwise why would we both know it and it be something that you want to avoid so badly?”
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