“Please…” And then the sound became muffled. Jack didn’t know what he was hearing now. Was that water in the background? The sounds of scuffling? “Oh God!” Chris shrieked. And then, “JOHNNYYYYYYYYYYYY!”
The radio emitted one final sound. It lasted less than two seconds before it was cut short. It was brief, but it was the largest sound he’d ever heard, and it dug a hole in his gut the size of the Grand Canyon. That goddamned radio played Chris Testani’s final scream, followed by the hollow whump of something metal clanging against the bone of his young head.
And then it clicked off.
***
Across town, a monster slept in its comfortable lair that night. The monster dreamed as he lay sweating and panting on garish, red satin sheets. The cries of Chris and Johnny cut through his dream causing his blood to quicken. He awoke, grinned, and reached down to stroke his erection.
CHAPTER TWELVE
There had been a time, and not very long ago, that Tommy had wanted the black hat man to speak up and tell him why he was there. Now that he’d finally started talking, Tommy prayed to God that he’d shut up.
It was bad enough that he watched Tommy constantly, studied him as if he were a science project, cocking his head and raising that one eyebrow when Tommy’s actions didn’t prove out his theory. Even worse than that, he moved around constantly, pacing and looking out the window, which quite often made Tommy dizzy through his chemical haze. But every time he opened his mouth and spoke… oh Lord!
Jesse was smiling warmly now. Here it comes! Tommy thought. If he looked hard enough, focused hard enough, he could almost see Jesse’s face transforming. Was it going to be his mother’s voice again?
“Remember that day we got a hold of all the firecrackers and rode our bikes down to the river?”
Nicky. But not Nicky now, Nicky back when they were around ten and still rolling with laughter over the fart jokes they’d made up.
“Remember, Tommy?”
Oh God… Nicky, Nicky, Nicky!
“And you forgot the matches?” Jesse chuckled, but it was Nicky’s laugh all the way. How did he do that?
“And then we spent half the day rubbing things together trying to make sparks!”
Oh, how Tommy missed Nicky. He missed the days when things were so easy, when the most important thing he had to do all day was to avoid growing up.
“Gosh,” Nicky said. “It was so hot that day! Burning up, remember, buddy?”
Tommy smiled. He did remember. That summer was the hottest summer ever. They never had figured out how to start a fire with two sticks. Instead, they’d peeled off their shorts and gone swimming in their skivvies. The water was so blessedly cool…
“I remember,” Tommy said. He closed his eyes, and he was back there, splashing in the river with his best pal again.
“Yeah,” Jesse/Nicky answered. The voice had grown up now and gone cold. The flesh on Tommy’s neck, legs and arms immediately rose in chill bumps. “I wanted to live, asshole. I liked swimming in the river!”
“Shut up,” Tommy answered.
“There was so much more I wanted to do,” Nicky said. Sadness. The sadness in his voice was overwhelming. “I was going to college, Tommy. I had a future.”
“Shut up,” Tommy repeated.
“Why’d you have to drag me out that night?” Nicky answered. Was he crying? Tommy could hear the grief heavy in his voice. “Why’d you have to drag me into your stupid problems?”
Tommy rolled over and looked at the wall opposite him. He tried blocking his ears with his hands even though it hurt like crazy twisting his broken arm that way. The sound came through anyway. It was as if it weren’t coming in through his ears but rather through his brain.
“I could have done so much,” Nicky went on. “If only I hadn’t wasted my time being friends with you.”
Tommy rolled back over and sat up. He was now facing Jesse, looking directly into his face.
“Shut up, for the love of God!”
“I could even have… you know… had another go of things with Beth! She was a good time, Tommy! So good!” And then Jesse winked at him.
Tommy leaped out of bed, the red-hot fire of his rage fueling his every step. He’d kill that son-of-a-bitch! Shut him up for good! He was across the room in what seemed like a split second.
But Jesse was gone. Now you see me, now you don’t! Nicky’s laughter echoed through the room.
“GOD DAMN YOU TO HELL!” Tommy screamed.
“Put it back, Tommy,” Nicky’s voice commanded. It was coming from outside the window now, slightly muffled through the pane of glass.
Tommy lunged at the glass. With one fell swoop, he made the window, and, throwing his weight forward, he swung his casted arm at the thing. The glass shattered and flew outward in a burst of shards. Tommy screamed with rage, looking for something, anything, to hit, kill, maim.
But there was nothing there.
“Tommy? Are you all right?” Julie. “I heard you hollering. Why are you out of bed?”
Tommy spun around to look at his sister. He had no explanation, no answer for her questions.
“Let’s get you back to bed,” she said. “You shouldn’t be up yet.”
Why was she so calm? Couldn’t she see the shattered window? Couldn’t she see the blood running down his hand, dripping off of his fingers? And then he checked again to see if he could see these things. He could not. No blood, no shards, no Nicky. His hand and arm hurt like hell, though; the nerve endings all along his arm screamed of having been thrust through that window.
And the whole time that Julie was helping him back into bed, forcing more pills into his mouth and gently feeding him water from the glass on his bedside table, Tommy Cooper cried like a baby.
Ten minutes later, he was asleep.
Jesse wasn’t, though. He was back in the chair in the corner, and he was watching.
Time passed. Who knew how much of it? An hour? Two, maybe? Tommy was awake again, and, judging from the sunlight coming through the window, it was early afternoon. Jesse had been watching out that window for several minutes now, obviously anticipating something. Who was coming?
Jesse rose, walked toward the window and smiled again. And then Tommy heard John’s voice from outside. Wa, wa, wahhhh…
Within minutes, Beth had entered the room and pulled up the chair. A good time, Nicky’s voice ricocheted inside his head. So good! She looked so pretty today. Her hair was pulled back in a simple pony tail, wisps of it falling toward her face. She was wearing cut-off shorts and a tee-shirt and she looked like summer to him. Like summer, and like sunshine, and like everything that once was good about life.
Tommy was determined to give her the silent treatment. He didn’t want to. He wanted very much to talk to her, to hold her… He just didn’t feel able. What came next took him completely by surprise. She’d barely sat down when Jesse wandered over to the foot of his bed. Jesse was at his feet now and Beth was sitting at his left side. Jesse looked straight at Beth, removed his hat and tipped his head at her as if in greeting. Beth responded in kind.
“What the hell?” Tommy questioned. “You can see him?”
“I can see him,” she answered. “I can see him, hear him, and I can even feel him, Tommy. I’ve always been able to do that.”
“Well, I’ll be damned!”
“He’s not the only one. There are others. I never told you because… well, I never told anyone. It makes me feel a little weird I guess. I didn’t want you to think—”
“All those times in the cemetery? This is what it was all about? It was about you talking to dead people?” Tommy was more than a little creeped out by this revelation.
“Listen, Tommy, none of that matters right now. You want him to go away right? To leave you alone?”
“So you and he…? You actually talk to him?”
“Yes.” She shifted nervously in her chair, looking down at her feet as if she were ashamed. “Not always, though. Just recently. He
re’s the thing: you know about Nathanial’s tomb, right?”
“Nathanial’s tomb?” This just got weirder and weirder.
“It’s the place Nicky took you that night. The tomb with all the flowers around it. The one with the glass window.”
“That night?” Tommy was starting to get nervous now. “What are you talking about, Beth? Nicky didn’t take me anywhere.”
Jesse scowled at that. Beth merely reached down beside the chair and grabbed a rumpled, brown paper bag she’d apparently brought with her. Unrolling the top, she reached inside and produced a nearly empty Jack Daniel’s bottle.
“I was there, Tommy,” she said. “I couldn’t sleep that night. Everyone else was in bed and I just didn’t feel like staying in so I went for a walk. I took the short-cut through the woods but when I got close, I could hear you two talking.”
Tommy didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing.
“I didn’t mean to eavesdrop. I had decided to turn around and go back instead, but then I tripped over a branch, and you both took off. After you were gone, I went to the tomb and I saw what you had done. I know it was you, Tommy. Why did you do that?”
She looked hurt. Jesse looked hurt as well. Tommy wasn’t saying a word.
“Here,” she said, handing him the bottle. “I found this and brought it home with me. I didn’t want you to get in any trouble.”
And then Tommy knew. He’d always known how much she loved the cemetery. He’d seen the love that she showered on that crazy tomb. The fact that she’d seen what had happened, knew that he did it, and still brought the bottle back to him… The fact that she put him before all of those things that she loved said volumes. She did still love him!
And then Jesse was gone and she was kissing him. She was kissing his face, his lips, his broken arm, and it felt so goddamned good for someone to be touching him again, after all this time, loving him again, and oh Jesus, God in heaven, what a long time it had been since he felt this way. He was starving, and she nourished him. Drowning, and she saved him. He wanted nothing more than to spiral down into her—to leave Tommy behind and to become a part of her instead. And God, it was lovely. They made love with a hunger that was born out of desperation, and in the midst of this hellish time, Tommy found a last bit of heaven lying there with her.
But those moments passed as they always do, and, too soon, she was dressed again and back in the chair. The light in her eyes was different though. There was hope there. There was hope inside of Tommy, too.
And then Jesse popped back into existence. He was there again, right at the foot of Tommy’s bed.
“We have to talk about him,” Beth said. “About why he’s here and what we need to do.”
“Who is he?” Tommy asked.
“Nathanial is the spirit of a little boy who died a long time ago,” she began. “I don’t know what he died of. I only know that he was very young when it happened. He’s afraid of the dark. Always was. When he died, his father had that tomb made with the window so that he would never have to be in complete darkness again. Jesse is his father.” Beth pointed, indicating the black hat man. “I don’t know what you did with the skull, but we have to get it back. We have to put it back in the tomb. That’s what he wants.”
Jesse nodded in the affirmative. Tommy was starting to recognize the bond between the two of them, and he didn’t like it one bit.
“So the real reason you came was not to bring the bottle back? You didn’t come here to help me, did you, Beth?”
Beth was shocked. “Of course I did! I’m trying to help you, Tommy!”
“No. You’re trying to help him.” He thought of Nicky then, cold and dead and of how Jesse was the one who made him that way.
“I’m trying to help both of you!” Beth answered. “When you broke the glass, you changed things. They’ve figured out that the skull is missing and they don’t want to replace the glass until they can find it and put it back. In the meantime, they’ve boarded up the hole with plywood so now it’s dark in there again. Nathanial is scared. He hides all the time now. He doesn’t come out and play with the toys I left for him anymore.”
This was just getting too weird. Beth talking to little dead boys. Beth talking to the black hat man, pleading his case. Beth wanting him to get the skull back. He thought of crawling down into the dry well to retrieve the thing. That was the last thing on Earth that he wanted to do. He didn’t want to see the thing nor touch it ever again. In fact, he wanted it as far away from him as he could get it. The well wasn’t even far enough. And going back out to the Perkins place? Back to where they’d heard the voices? No way! And then he thought of Nicky again and the sounds of his car careening into the pole when they had left that place. Once again, he heard Nicky screaming, and his heart hardened like cement. If Jesse had a problem, he just didn’t give a shit.
“No,” he said calmly.
“No? But why not?” Beth looked truly distressed now.
Tommy turned away from her and looked directly at Jesse. It was a toss-up as to which was colder when he spoke: his eyes or his voice.
“An eye for an eye,” he said.
The two men locked eyes and for just a moment Tommy felt victorious. But then fire flew from the eyes of the black hat man, from his eyes and directly into the eyes of the hapless Tommy. It was a fire like no other, comprised of rage and grief and guilt. And oh, God, how it burned! Tommy was unable to move, unable to defend himself in any way. He screamed and writhed, but he could not break away. It lasted for all of a moment and every bit of an eternity, and when it finally stopped, Tommy Cooper was blind.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Tommy didn’t remember much about the night that followed. They’d taken him kicking and screaming out of his bedroom and to the emergency room. A barrage of tests later, and they could find no physical cause for his blindness. They hadn’t missed the alcohol content in his system, though. Sometime in the wee hours, they’d proffered a diagnosis of hysterical blindness brought on by hallucinations caused by the mixture of alcohol and pain killers. They decided that his eyesight would return, given the proper amount of time and healing. They’d also decided that his sanity was more important than his comfort level and so had taken away the pain killers and prescribed valium instead.
He was delivered into the hands of his stepfather, who promptly brought him back home and planted him in his bed like a mushroom. And that’s exactly what he felt like—a mushroom. An inconsequential, helpless, scared mushroom… on valium. Not good for anything or anyone, no future, no hope, no light.
But he was beginning to see Jesse’s point. A few minutes down in that old well, and he could get the skull back and maybe his eyesight with it. He didn’t know if Jesse was here or not. He didn’t know if it was night or day, rain or sunshine. He didn’t know anything. He lay there, not exactly high, but more like low on valium for what seemed like hours. The house was quiet, the ticking of the clock incessant.
And then for the third time in as many days, he heard John’s voice in the driveway. Wa, wa, waaaaa…
For the first time, he actually heard the chair as it was dragged across the floor to the side of his bed. Had it always made that scraping noise? His mind, working in foggy slow-motion now attempted to dissect the sound.
“Morning, Tommy.”
Did he know that voice? He’d heard it somewhere before. Not family, though. No one he heard on a regular basis.
“I brought the Lincoln over to have the oil changed,” the random voice went on. “Thought I’d stop in and say hello while I was here. Check on your progress.”
That voice!
“Your father says you’re going to be just fine, Tommy, right as rain in no time.”
Something shifted in Tommy’s gut. Valium or no, he had that uneasy feeling. That feeling that bad has just crossed over to worse, and was hell-bent on making it to complete and utter devastation.
“I wanted to talk to you about something.” Random voice. Here it com
es! He thought. Whoever this was, he was sitting close enough to Tommy that he could hear him chomping on a wad of gum. He could smell the spearmint of the gum mixed with the scent of some kind of cologne or aftershave, and it made his stomach turn.
“You’re a bright young man, Tommy, with a good future ahead of you, the last couple of weeks aside. As a leader of this community, I like to see our young folks grow up and lead productive lives. I like to see them get good jobs, marry, and have children of their own.”
Chomp, chomp… He worked that gum like an umpire—like it was his job. Tommy half expected him to lean over and spit on the floor.
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