“Jesus Christ!” Tommy screamed. He was out of the car in a split second, Nicky right behind him. They had no more than exited the car when the radio fell silent again. “What the hell was that, Nicky?”
“Oh wow!” Nicky answered. “That was weird. Never seen that happen before.”
“I’m done. You brought the damned skull with you. You take it to the Perkins Place,” Tommy said. “I’m walking home.”
“Come on, Tommy. Geez. You’re being ridiculous! It’s just a piece of old bone. It can’t hurt you and it sure can’t turn on the radio.”
“You saw it!”
“Look, it’s an old car. It’s probably just something screwy with the wiring. I don’t know, because I’m not a mechanic. But seriously, you can’t believe that it was turned on by a skull?”
Nicky began chuckling, an easy, breathy hee-hee that built to a full-blown, throaty laugh. When he had done, he answered himself, “Hell, I don’t know what happened there but it’s dark and it’s been a hell of a night, and somehow we just got creeped out. Get in the car, buddy, and let’s get this over with. I’ll put Mr. Cranium in the back seat. You’ll be safe enough. I promise.”
Tommy got in.
Within ten minutes they were pulling onto Henley Road. Less a road than a pathway, it looked as though it had been created by wagon wheels in a long-gone era. A single lane, comprised of dirt paths for the wheels, was interrupted by tall grass springing up in the center. Obviously, no one had been by here in a long time. It wound straight through the trees, and Nicky drove slowly, the grass making a swooshing sound as it brushed the bottom of the car. One way in, and one way out.
A quarter of a mile later, they pulled into the overgrown yard of the Perkins Place. The farm had been grand once, in its heyday. The house itself was a Queen Anne-style monstrosity, three stories tall with several polygonal towers woven in between second- and third-story balconies. It had a wrap-around front porch, Dutch gables, and prissy Renaissance details including dentils, leaded bay windows, spindle-work balustrades, and wooden siding that was cut to resemble fish scales.
It had been beautiful once, stately even, though never quite a mansion. But now it twisted and sagged, paint peeling, fish scale siding drooping in places and having fallen to the ground in others. It almost looked as though it had been painstakingly decorated with icing that had now begun to melt and slide downward. It was a house that longed for human companionship, a lonely house, a forsaken place.
Tommy and Nicky sat and stared. It looked different in the darkness than in daylight, much larger, and extraordinarily menacing. It looked hungry.
Nicky took the lead.
“Let’s get this done,” he said with a sigh.
Nicky reached into the back seat and grabbed the skull, and the pair climbed out of the car. Having been here several times before the murders took place, Nicky and Tommy both knew where the dry well was. Making their way to the yard behind the house was akin to cutting through the rainforest. The brush was waist-high and mingled with twisted vines, burdock, and thistles. English Ivy had not only overtaken the house, but anything else that would stand for it. But they pushed through anyway and soon were standing in front of an ancient iron-work gate that stood rusted shut upon what had once been a garden.
The gate itself was locked, chain and padlock hanging idly between the two sections. The hinges, however, had rusted through and the left-hand section of the gate, having once been firmly attached to a stone pediment, had fallen away and was leaning precariously toward the garden. One push and they were inside.
There’s an eerie kind of beauty in decay and this garden was no different. Gone were the neat beds of Pansies and Marigolds, having been replaced with wild sprays of waist-high Brown-eyed Susans and knee-high Daisies. Dandelions popped their heads up in random places where the shorter grass allowed. In the far corner lived an apple tree, laden with mottled greens and reds, the promise of a good harvest this year. And from somewhere next to the house (an old spigot, perhaps?) a steady dripping sound broke the silence. Drip… drip… drip…
Propped snugly against the back side of the house, stood a ladder. It was impossibly tall, the top rungs jutting several feet above the roof of the house. It’s like a stairway to heaven, Tommy thought.
In the very center of the garden stood a fountain, or rather a large, fluted concrete basin that had once functioned as a fountain. It was oddly tilted and slightly askew on its pedestal. Long ago, it had been white, bleached by the sun, but it had gone over now with streaks of acidy-gray and rust. Long-dead leaves floated lazily in the rain water captured by the bowl.
In another era, an angel had stood watch in the fountain, life-sized and formidable in her grim and unyielding beauty. At some point, she had fallen (or been pushed over), her head and wings partially sunken into the muddy earth below. Her legs and feet must have caught on the stone basin on the way down and come to rest in an uphill direction, her toes pointing at the sky. Upside down, she looked macabre— like a dying thing— limbs pedaling the air, muscle memory recreating a dead run.
An old shovel sprang up from the ground beside the fountain. Tommy fought the urge to pick the shovel up and bring it down on the angel’s head, bludgeoning her until she was put out of her misery. Immediately, he wondered where the hell that thought came from. I’m losing it! he thought. Could this night get any weirder?
The dry well was just off to the right and easily visible in the moonlight. Built from stacked fieldstone lining the chasm in a circular pattern, it was perhaps thirty feet deep. The lip of it jutted two feet above the ground, the opening covered with a flat, slate rock.
It took both boys to lift the rock, but the task was quickly accomplished. Having propped the lid up against the wall of the well, the two peered into the deeps within. Beyond the first few feet they could see nothing but blackness down there.
Nicky began unwrapping his tee-shirt from the skull, carefully so as not to leave fresh prints. Leaning over the well, he prepared to let the thing drop.
“I know you’re out there, boys,” came a male voice from the woods behind them. It sounded like a recording or like an album playing through poor speakers. The voice was calm, commanding, and even amused— a cat-and-mouse kind of a thing. “I can smell you!”
Both boys froze, staring at one another in shock and horror.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are!”
“Last. Fuckin’. Straw,” Nicky hissed, and dropped the skull into the well. It landed with a decided splash and Nicky’s feet got wings.
The two boys tore through the garden gates and around the side of the house. They arrived at the car in record time. Nicky cranked the engine and slammed it into reverse. The car lurched backwards, and Nicky braked hard. Tires squealed as he threw the transmission into drive and stomped on the gas pedal. The car fish-tailed as it made the dirt road. Nicky cranked the wheel a hard left and quickly straightened it. Clumps of dirt and grass pummeled the underside of the car but he never slowed. They made the highway in less than two minutes, leaving the scene behind with the squeal of smoking tires.
Neither one said a word for several minutes. Nor did they breathe. It was Tommy who broke the silence.
“Shit’s gotta change,” he said, breathing at last. “We gotta straighten out our act. And no more of this cemetery crap. I am never going back there!”
For a long moment, Nicky didn’t answer. And then finally, calmly, he said, “We have to, Tommy. We have to go back.”
“Whaaaa… ? No freaking way.”
“We left the bottle of Jack, Tommy. It’s in the tomb.”
Tommy had just long enough to open his mouth in protest but the words died quickly on his breath.
It was then that Jesse Eades, dressed in black and looking mad as a hatter, stepped full-on and dead-center in front of the car. He may as well have been a brick wall.
CHAPTER NINE
Tommy was dreaming. In the dream, a much younger version of himse
lf was walking along the road with his mother. He instinctively knew that the reason they were walking was that their old Chevy had failed them once again. It was broken down a mile or so back and they were walking to their house. The day was balmy, early summer, and Laura did not seem too concerned about the vehicle. In fact, her mood was light and she giggled as they chatted. She was young again and healthy, and she held Tommy’s hand as they walked. She had just begun telling him a story about when she was a child, something about a trip to the country and her grandfather’s farm. Tommy wasn’t really listening, though the sound of her voice soothed him. He was busy studying her pretty face. For the first time in a long while, everything seemed right again. It was just him and his mom, and that was the way it was supposed to be. His tiny heart was bursting at the seams, joyful with seeing her again.
And then he was wide awake. She didn’t fade away, didn’t say goodbye. She was just gone all at once, having been replaced with the masked faces of an emergency room team.
“Mommy?” he cried out in his confusion. “Mom?” The years in between childhood and the present were gone in a cruel flash. And then the truth slammed into him. He was a grown man, his mother was dead and he’d never hear her voice again. A second ago, she’d been right there holding his hand. Now he couldn’t have touched her if his arm were a mile long. It was a pain like no other.
Pain turned to anger and Tommy lashed out at everything around him. He swung at the green surgical masks that surrounded him, connecting with the side of a bespectacled head. He cursed them all as they first restrained and then sedated him. He cried as darkness overtook him once again.
When he awakened some hours later, he was in a hospital room and he hurt everywhere. Beth Riley was asleep in a chair in the corner and a nurse was adjusting a valve on the IV line that fed into the back of his right hand. His left arm had been casted. He did not know what else had been done to him while he had been unconscious.
“Morning, Sleepyhead!” the nurse said. “Go easy! I wouldn’t try to sit up just yet. You’ve had kind of a rough night.”
“What happened?” Tommy asked. “How did I get here?”
“You’ve had an accident,” the nurse answered. There was a cheery sound in her voice that seemed strange to Tommy given that she was delivering bad news. Her tone would have been more fitting if she’d been telling him he’d won some free movie tickets. “You’re a little banged up there, Tommy Cooper, but you’ll be right as rain in a week or so.”
“My head hurts,” Tommy said.
“I imagine it does,” she answered. “You took quite a knock on it. The doctor will be rounding soon and he’ll go over all your injuries with you. Are you hungry?”
“All of my injuries?” Tommy asked. “What’s wrong with me? What happened?” At this, Beth stirred, awakening and sitting forward in her chair.
“Hey!” she said, parroting the nurse’s overly-bright tone. “How are you feeling?”
Tommy wasn’t sure if he should be happy to see her or not, given the circumstances. She rose and crossed the room, stopping at the foot of Tommy’s bed. I must look pretty bad, he reasoned, if she won’t come any closer than that. It was as if he was contagious and she was afraid she might catch something. He lifted his right arm and began to explore the multiple bandages on his face and head.
“Leave it be, Tommy,” the nurse said as she gently tugged his arm, moving it back to the bed beside him. “It’s nothing that won’t heal in time.”
“Beth?” he asked, uncertainly. “I don’t remember any accident.”
Beth shifted uneasily.
“The important thing is that you’re going to be all right,” she answered. “Your father and sister are downstairs having breakfast in the cafeteria. They’ll be back any minute.”
Why was she trying to be evasive?
“What happened, Beth?”
“Please, Tommy. Just try and rest, okay? You just need to rest now and get better.”
“Answer me!” Tommy demanded, “What the hell—?”
And then he remembered. It came back to him in a series of brief flashes. He saw Jesse Eades’s face as clearly as if it were right there in front of him. Graying skin, black hat perched atop a head full of long dark hair, and those eyes! They burned into him with frightening intensity, dark with anger and hatred. He heard the squeal of the brakes and felt the car go into a skid. He heard the crunch of metal as a power pole rushed up to meet them. And then he heard Nicky scream. Tommy raised both of his arms, slamming his hands over his ears as the sound of Nicky’s screaming shot through his head and pierced his soul. Tears coursed down his cheeks, and terror overtook him as he prepared to ask the question.
He looked Beth directly in the eyes and asked, “Nicky? Where’s Nicky?”
The look on Beth’s face was all the answer he needed, and Tommy’s whole world went over to black. His anger was beyond red-hot. It was a wall of hatred, blacker than any midnight since the beginning of time. His desire to hurt and destroy was bigger than he was, pulsing outward in monstrous waves until it threatened to punch through the very edges of the universe.
“GET OUT!” he screamed, and he began tearing at blankets, IV lines, and bandages alike. Anything that he could get a hold of was ripped out, torn up, heaved aside. “I HATE YOU, YOU BITCH! GET THE HELL AWAY FROM ME!” He was yelling at the nurse, he was yelling at Beth, he was yelling at cold death herself, and he fought with every fiber of his being. “LEMME THE HELL OUT OF HERE!”
The battle was short-lived though as half a dozen nurses and attendants rushed into the room, restraining him as he struggled. A needle was rammed into his bicep, and he screamed all the way down into unconsciousness.
And so it went for the next couple of days, with Tommy floating in and out of consciousness and people floating in and out of his room. Sometimes he was aware of their presence, and sometimes he was not, with one exception. Beginning with the very next time he woke up, Jesse Eades was his constant companion. He saw him sitting in that chair when no one else was around. He saw him pacing at the foot of his bed when others were in the room, saw him walk to the window, pulling the curtains back as he stared out into the night. And Jesse saw Tommy right back, as he seemed to wait and watch, watch and wait… but for what?
He looked mad as hell, but Tommy didn’t give a shit. Tommy had no idea who he was, why he was there, or what he was angry about. He only knew that Jesse was the one responsible for Nicky’s death and as soon as he got out of there, he had every intention of killing him with his bare hands. It was the thing Tommy held on to for all of those days and through all of the pain.
In the beginning, he’d questioned his nurses about the strange man dressed in old-fashioned, black clothing, the man with the hat. What he got for his trouble was another sedative and another long nap. He didn’t particularly like sleeping so much with Jesse in the room. He sure didn’t trust him. Not that he cared really; if he were to die right now it would be a relief. Everything he cared about was on the other side anyway.
The doctors and nurses did not fail to notice the way Tommy’s eyes followed something invisible around the room. That got him dragged upstairs for another battery of tests, in and out of strange looking machinery that scanned his brain for signs of damage. He didn’t want the tests, did not care if his brain were damaged, wished the damned thing would quit entirely and give him some peace.
In the beginning, he’d tried talking to Jesse, asking him what he was about, why he was there, and finally demanding that he leave. Jesse gave no answer. Instead he watched and waited, waited and watched, and stared. He stared directly into Tommy’s eyes as if he was trying to drill into his soul. Without saying a word, he seemed to be demanding an explanation from Tommy. Without saying a word, he increased and decreased the pressure at will. Tommy, feeling nothing but defiance, stared right back.
In fact, Jesse Eades was the only individual with which Tommy communicated during that period. He refused to speak to Beth, his s
tepfather, or his sister when they visited. He declined to talk to the doctors and answered the nurses only when given no choice. A week and a half passed this way and finally, given no sign of any lasting brain damage, or any other reason to keep him, the doctors released him with the firm recommendation that he return in a few days for a psychological consultation. Tommy had no intention of doing that.
Jesse Eades rode home with him in the car.
CHAPTER TEN
And then he moved himself right into Tommy’s bedroom as well.
Tommy, who’d suffered a fractured skull and multiple contusions along with a broken left arm, had been given strict orders by the physicians at the hospital to stay in bed. Those orders were to remain in effect for at least a week. As if he wanted to get up anyway. His head was pounding! On top of that, it seemed like every muscle in his body ached. The steady diet of painkillers wasn’t doing much to ease that, either. No worries, though. He’d see the painkillers and raise them the bottle of vodka that he kept hidden under his bed. This was Hotel Hell, and one way or the other, Tommy was checking out.
Nathanial's Window- The Wrath of Jesse Eades Page 6