“Don’t you have family buried here?” Oscar said, sounding annoyed. “Shouldn’t it look familiar?”
“A little does,” I said. “But it’s not like I come here in the dark—or with some deranged killer lurking behind the tombstones.”
Oscar gave me not amused. “Let’s try over that way,” he said, pointing. “I think I can see the church’s roof through the trees.”
I looked where he pointed but couldn’t see anything resembling a roof. Still, being at a loss, I brandished the flashlight and led us that way.
Less than thirty feet and then I heard it—a low, almost-animalistic groan. It came from a cluster of ferns on my left. I stopped and played the beam among the red and green leaves.
“You hear that?” I asked.
Oscar came up beside me, leveling his muzzle along the path of the beam. “Nah-uh. What is it? The killer?”
I shrugged. “I heard a groan. Maybe just an animal. But we should check it out.”
Oscar nodded and we inched between the darkly gleaming granite, in another moment ducking through the foliage, guns at ready.
My flashlight penetrated the dark as we emerged into a kind of hollow, hemmed in by branches, leaves covering the top. On the ground in the center of the small hollow lay Father Winterby.
“Oh Christ,” Oscar hissed, kneeling down. “He’s bleeding. He’s been cut.” He whipped his coat off and wrapped it around the priest’s chest. I managed to train the flashlight there just before he closed the two flaps, affording me a horrifying glimpse of the slit in the priest’s lower abdomen, wormy guts spilling out. The earth swung underneath me and I thought I was going to be sick.
Oscar murmured a curse and then cried out, “Shine the light on his head!”
I did, illuminating horror. The poor man’s mouth had been turned into a grisly bouquet of ruined flesh. It stood open an inch too wide, corners slit. He was missing teeth; his bloody, ruined lips sagged limply into the vacancies they left behind. I braved another panic-stricken glance and saw his flopping, severed tongue, now a mere stud of red meat.
The priest groaned—the same sound which had drawn me—but he could do little more than that.
“Stay calm, Father,” Oscar said. “We’re going to get you an ambulance. We’re going—”
And just like that the priest went still. His head swung to a stop over his left shoulder, leaking pools of blood. The chest, which before had continued to pump, went flat. I saw his eyes grow rigid, glaze over, and within my soul I experienced a feeling which I can only describe as a sweeping—as in the breath of his spirit leaving his body as he was suddenly translated from this world into the next. Then the hollow went quiet and there was one less living human being in the cemetery.
“Dammit!” Oscar growled. He got to his feet. “Asshole!” he shouted into the trees.
“Come on,” I said. “He could be anywhere. We don’t wanna lose our heads now.”
I trained the beam away from the corpse, and Oscar slid his coat up to cover the priest’s head.
“Been a while since I was present at someone’s lights going out,” he said. “It’s a strange thing.”
“You’re telling me.”
“I can’t imagine what you experienced, what with your…sensitivity, and everything.”
“Intensity, that’s for sure.”
“I don’t understand how we didn’t hear anything. He must’ve screamed bloody murder when this was done to him.”
“I saw into his mouth,” I said. “The tongue was cut out.”
Oscar shook his head.
“Can we get out of here?”
“I still need to call this in.”
“Can’t we do it in the parking lot?”
He nodded. We exited the bosky hollow and continued moving through the marble graves, and before long we had managed to locate the wrought-iron gate back to safety.
Chapter Sixteen
In the parking lot with the now sinister-feeling church to our right, Oscar withdrew his iPhone and made to call in the ambulance, but I stopped him.
“What about the number on the reverse of the photograph?”
Oscar hesitated. “What about it?”
“This guy wants us to call him. We should check it out?”
“But the priest—”
“Let’s be honest, Oscar,” I said. “We both know the second you phone this in, the place will be crawling with Feds. Which means no more access given to yours truly. And who knows what kind of trouble you’ll get into for bringing me here. After all, didn’t you design this so we wouldn’t be harassed by a bunch of suits?”
“I didn’t expect the killer to show up.”
“So what? It just means a bonus opportunity has fallen into our laps. I don’t know about you, but I wanna catch this guy, and he’s here right now. As soon as your buddies show up, that ends, and he’ll hightail it outa here.”
A searing pain rocketed through the front of my skull, and, wincing, I cradled my head. I was bouncing a fresh cigarette out of my pack, but Oscar stopped me, withdrawing the bottle of Advil from his coat pocket and shaking the pills like a rattle. I dry-swallowed a double dose and thanked him.
He furrowed his eyebrows in thought. No one liked having to make the hard decision he was having to make. It flew in the face of his personal moral law-enforcement compass. I felt for him as I watched and waited while he mentally suffered.
Still, I knew he’d make the right choice, and finally he did. Pulling the folded picture out of his pocket, he used the light of his iPhone and keyed in the numbers. He listened, then held the phone out to me. “It’s ringing,” he said. “You take it.”
Before I could protest, the device was in my hand, and then there was a low voice coming across the line, “Hello? Hello, who is there?”
I rushed the phone to my ear. “Hi. Yeah. It’s us. We found your number and the Polaroid and now we’re calling.”
A pause. I could hear his slow intake of breath and a crunching sound I recognized as footsteps. He was on the move. I scanned the trees poking through the wrought-iron fence surrounding the parking lot, but saw nothing.
“Where are you?” I asked.
He ignored the question. “Did you…see him? Did you have a good look?”
“We found him,” I said. “Quite a mess you made.”
He tittered almost girlishly. “What did you think? Were you impressed? I usually cannot stand working on males. I adore females, you know. More elegant in every way. But they’ve got me coming around. I found this one very satisfying.”
“I don’t know if you realize this, but you just killed a priest. A servant of God. I doubt the man upstairs thinks highly of you at this moment. You might consider counting your blessings.”
He hissed—a serpentine sound. “Bah! God—nonsense… Only demons on my planet. Demons and dreams. Them. You know about them, don’t you? You must. They have certainly taken an interest in you.”
“I know a lot of things,” I replied coolly. “Like where you live. What you look like. Just random info.”
He chuckled. “Seems we both have the other set firmly within our minds. And you’re also familiar with my work. You’ve beheld it on the physical plane with your two eyes, and I know of your work, as well, though much less intimately. They have shown me pictorially through visions and mental images what it is you do, this gift you have, and how you’ve managed to employ it for good as a private investigator. It must be why they want you—because you’re an agent of good. You are helping humans.”
It was quiet enough in the parking lot that both Oscar and I could hear the man’s voice streaming out of the phone’s speaker. I glanced at Oscar now and saw his confusion and worry. I said into the iPhone, “What I’ve seen of your work has left a horrible taste in my mouth. And an urge to see you dead.”
; “Good—good! That’s a compliment, thank you. I learned from the best, you know. They taught me well.”
“Who are they?”
“You are joking.”
“No.”
“Then you don’t know.” He breathed his next word, “Wow. Well they’ve got you marked for execution, my friend.”
“Why?”
“They’re silent on that. But I think I’ve got it figured out, and I think it is because of your gift and what you do with it. Like I said, they have shown me pictorially what you do. They call you the Vessel. Which must mean other beings who have aligned themselves with the humans work their will through you. The beings whom I serve have a will to pull humans out of themselves, obliterate them, so they can take control of the Earth and the physical plane.”
“I say again, who are they?”
“They are opposite of those whom are in touch with you.”
“Demons, then.”
He scoffed. “Now, just demons. We’re not in Sunday school here. These are beings who wish to usurp Earth from humans, whom they see as parasitic, an infestation of the planet. These beings are not yet wholly physical. They exist in dream substance, incorporeally, which is why they can only interact with humans through dreams and mental images. They need us, as their instruments, to purge the planet. Thus they inspire war and the like.
“But there are those like me, special cases, whom they use to carry out direct objectives, to work specifically on an individual basis. Charles Manson, Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, Dennis Rader. It’s an honor that I have been nominated to such prestigious heights.”
“Sounds like you’ve earned three gold stars,” I said.
He paused. Then grunted. “These beings are working, Mr. Evens, to bring themselves down to the physical plane. To concretize themselves, solidify and become ‘made of matter’. At such time they will decimate the remaining human population and conquer the planet. I’ve aided them in their mission.”
“What does helping them do for you? Won’t you eventually just end up dead like all the rest?”
“Yes and no. Humans will merely be switching places with these beings. They’ll become physical, material, and we will become immaterial, like dream substance. Only those who have aided in their cause—like me—will the beings bind to themselves and to Earth—and allow to exist through them, in dreams and mental images, as they presently coexist through us. It’s complicated. But the rest of the incorporeal humans will drift away into cosmic space, souls without bodies, left to wander for eternity. This will happen, Mr. Evens. The process has already begun.”
I couldn’t think of anything to say. I was stunned. What I’d just been told resonated in my veins like electrified venom, and Oscar too had gone peaked, his eyes twitchy and narrow.
The voice came out of the phone, “Is the fat one with you, the detective? He is, isn’t he?”
I held the phone toward Oscar. “I’m here,” he said. His voice broke over the word here, like an adolescent’s.
“You do not interest them as much as the Vessel.”
“Lucky me.”
“But I have something that might interest you.”
“I’m all ears.”
There was a pause then a shuffling sound; then a hysterical female voice poured out of the speaker. The voice echoed from somewhere nearby, within the cemetery as well, creating a bizarre stereo effect.
“…elp! Oh God! …elp! Somebody help me!”
Oscar’s face went completely white. “Becky?”
“…scar? Is that you?”
“Christ, Becky! Where are you, are you—”
“Oh, Oscar, oh my God, Oscar! He’s gonna kill me; you have to get me out of here! He’s gonna kill—”
And just like that, the call ended and silence reigned. Her voice vanished from the phone, vanished out of the cemetery as well, perhaps only a split second later.
Oscar went crazy, snatching the iPhone from my hands, screaming at the top of his lungs, “Becky! Becky!” He raised his head suddenly and bayed toward the sky like a wolf, “Becky!”
When his eyes found me again there was a desperate fire in them that I had never seen before. He shoved the phone into his pocket with a vigorous thrust, then chambered a round in his Beretta.
“Let’s go,” he said.
Chapter Seventeen
I did my best to keep up with him, but his pace was frantic. He wasn’t even bothering to use the flashlight, which I played across the cold, lonely graves, and several times I tried to call him back, expressing my concern. He ignored me. Best I could do was hurry along behind him, the light out ahead.
He made a beeline, somehow, directly back to the place where we’d found the head, back along the rear perimeter fence. I was baffled as to how he had accomplished it. “Seems you have powers of your own,” I joked.
“Give me the light,” he said, extending his hand.
I did what he asked. He began searching frantically through the bushes and trees, behind larger headstones, aiming the muzzle of his Beretta together with the flashlight, whipping about at any sound.
I gripped the handle of the .45, trying to keep calm, to remain a rational, thinking person, but to see Oscar so upset was wearing on me. I kept a keen eye out for any sign of movement but didn’t see anything. It was a struggle to stop my hands from shaking. I attempted to tune in to my higher mental faculties, but received only static.
“Are you gonna stand there or help me?” Oscar snapped.
I humored him. I searched the bushes and branches, lightless as I was, though I knew we wouldn’t find anything. Our guy was keeping on the move, not hiding out in one stationary spot. I had intuited as much. If anything, he would find us before we found him. That’s what I wanted to be ready for.
“He’s not here,” I told Oscar.
“Then we’ll keep looking.”
“He’ll stay one step ahead.”
“You got a better idea?”
He started to stomp away, but then turned and answered his own question. He took out the iPhone, thumbed at it, waited, then ended the call angrily. “Goes right to an automated message.”
“He probably switched it off so we can’t track him.”
Just then Oscar’s phone made a piercing beep that shattered the surrounding dark. I thought it was ringing, but then realized it was merely a text.
Oscar read it, then held it out for me to see: the vessel knows where 2 look.
He put the phone back in his pocket. His normally soft face and bald head resembled a hard, polished stone. “So, Vessel,” he said. “Where do we look?” The glare he gave me added that he would kick my ass if I didn’t reply quickly.
The answer arose out of my soul at once, not as a picture of some specific location, but as the image of two marble headstones. One of them said Alice Steinman, and the other said Sylvia Steinman. The image flowed back down, receding like a wave in the ocean.
“He’s at my mother’s and Aunt Sylvia’s graves,” I said. I held out my hand for the flashlight and he reluctantly passed it over.
“Of course he is,” he said.
“Only trouble will be finding it.”
“You can do it. You’re a bloodhound. Let’s hurry.”
I nodded and wheeled into the dark, deciding that picking any direction and moving was our safest bet. I picked a path through the many sizes of headstones, through the wilting flowers and sighing statues, waving the flashlight like a magic wand. Oscar kept at my rear, less than two meters away.
Eventually some of the cemetery’s layout began to look familiar. I experienced the ghost of a memory, let old experiences flow back to my conscious mind until soon I knew I was on the right track.
I grinned, glancing over my shoulder. “I’m remembering.”
“Good. That piece ready?”
; I paused, checked. “Yep. Safety’s off.” I made sure one was in the chamber, then nodded again.
“Watch out for Becky, now,” he said. “There isn’t much visibility, and there’s going to be a lot of firing. Maybe. We have to be aware of what we’re shooting at. If anything happens to her I’ll never forgive myself.”
I placed a hand over my heart. “You have my word of honor.”
My tone had been serious, but something about the gesture must have struck Oscar as odd, because he smirked and his eyebrows formed into a furrow. I gave him a smile in return.
“All right, let’s go,” he said. “But let’s see if we can do it without the light. Maybe if we sneak up on him, we’ll gain the upper hand.”
I switched off the light and darkness raced in around us like a herd of wild beasts. Luckily a hint of spectral moonlight filtered down through the branches, lighting our way. The air was cold. I hadn’t yet realized it on account of the flashlight, but a heavy mist had begun to form above the ground, creeping around the headstones.
We kept moving toward what I suspected was the west perimeter. The grounds faced south, I knew, with the church building at the head. I let my intuition guide me, following the feeling like a blind man tapping his cane.
I was jerked suddenly left by my arm into a copse of oak and maple trees whose roots and trunks dominated the soil. No graves were dug here. Oscar’s hand slid over my mouth, sealing it, and with his weight he forced me down into a kneeling position. I was glad it’d happened so fast, or else I might’ve started shooting.
Oscar looked at me with big, round, serious eyes and placed a finger over his lips. Then he pointed through a space in the branches and whispered, “There’s someone moving by the tombs. Watch for a second.”
I allowed my eyes to follow his hand. Through the darkness and the screens of foliage, I saw what he had seen: a murky figure, nothing more than a shadow, weaving in and out of the graves. I watched longer and saw another figure as well, less active and lower to the ground. I determined the latter was Oscar’s wife, Becky.
The Dream Beings Page 7