Dark Screams, Volume 9

by Dark Screams- Volume 9 (retail) (epub)

“You shouldn’t put those kinds of ideas in my head.”

  “But I want them in your head, Bill.”

  The unnerving parade of spirits pushed in tight to my back, tickled my neck. Something about Sykes’s voice and manner. More craziness, I thought. Some new insanity to throw me off when I needed real information. “Did you attack Arthur Milton last night?”

  “Was that the name of the man with the enormous shlong?”

  “Someone murdered Arthur last night. Was it you?”

  Sykes laughed. He dropped his head back and let it roll against the cinderblock.

  “There once was a man from Nantucket…”

  “Sykes!”

  “What did you think of that, Bill? That cock, I mean. It was pretty damned impressive. I’ll bet someone is weeping over its loss. Some poor woman…or man. That’s going to leave a tremendous void.”

  “Did you murder Arthur Milton?”

  “Bill,” Sykes said, his voice sharp and edged with anger. “You saw what killed him. Now, did it look like me?”

  “No.”

  “Then why ask?” Sykes’s eyes sparkled at that question.

  “It’s my job.”

  “It’s your job to ask ridiculous questions? What does a position like that pay?”

  “Are you saying there was someone else? Another man?”

  The discomfort with Sykes was deep into my nerves now; the sense of something ominous sharing the room was overpowering. I wanted out of the holding area, wanted to be away from Sykes, with several locked doors between us, but there was more I needed to know.

  “Is he coming back tonight?” I asked.

  “He’s not the one you should be worried about, Bill.”

  “Then why don’t you tell me what I should be worried about?”

  “Wouldn’t it be swell; if I were to tell?”

  “Fine,” I said, standing from the chair. “Sit here until the state boys show. You can entertain them with your fairy rhymes.”

  “What an unenlightened comment.”

  “Fuck you, Sykes,” I said.

  “Tell me something, Bill,” Sykes said, causing me to pause at the door. “Does your wife know?”

  —

  Infuriated with Sykes’s games, I stormed into the office, startling Bucky Minden into dropping a pile of papers.

  “I don’t want anyone going in there,” I told him. “When will the troopers be around for him?”

  Bucky, still looking flustered, pushed his glasses back up on his nose. “I was just going to tell you. They have themselves a situation at the rest area off exit twenty-seven.”

  I knew the place. It was only six miles up the interstate.

  “What happened?”

  “They aren’t sure,” Bucky said. “They found some abandoned vehicles…a couple semis and an SUV. Windows were broken out. They found some blood at the scene, but no bodies. They’re doing a sweep of the area now.”

  I considered Douglas Sykes then. He’d had a lot of time between Arthur’s murder and his arrest early that morning. The rest area in question sat on the northern edge of the forest. He could have made it there and back with time to spare. “Do they think it’s connected to Arthur’s attack?”

  “Couldn’t say, Sheriff.”

  “Well, I don’t want this freak here overnight.”

  “Yes, sir,” Bucky said, looking frightened, as if I’d asked him to take Sykes home and put him up in a guest room.

  I slammed the door to my office and dropped into my chair. What the hell had Sykes meant about Lisa? What was she supposed to know? Hell, she wasn’t conscious enough throughout the course of the day to know much of anything, but what exactly was the prisoner asking?

  We’re being punished, Les said.

  An uneasy flush rose in my cheeks.

  —

  I chatted with State Trooper Coltraine at three that afternoon. His voice carried a tone of calm efficiency, though I could tell he was feeling a bit rattled about the night’s events. In addition to Arthur’s murder, they were now burdened by the rest area mystery. According to Coltraine, a salesman by the name of Tubbs drove into the rest area at just after five that morning, trying to make it up to Marrenville for an eight a.m. meeting. When he arrived, he noticed the SUV, its passenger-side windows smashed, glass all over the concrete. He called the troopers, and they came on the scene to find two semi cabs similarly beat up. No signs of the drivers. They had already done a thorough search of the buildings (“found some blood in the men’s room”) and the fields spreading out to the east (“didn’t find a damned thing”). They were going into the woods about the time Coltraine called me.

  As for Sykes, Coltraine said, “We still have men in your area, following up on last night. I’m surprised they haven’t checked in with you yet. At any rate, they have instructions to pick Sykes up on their way back. I’m sure they’ll be along shortly.”

  I ended the call, then dialed my house. I told Lisa I’d be working late, and she hung up on me.

  Since Sykes was going to be with us longer than I’d thought or wanted, I sent Bucky on down to Peg’s Diner to get our prisoner some food. While he was gone, I went back into the holding area, took my chair.

  “It’s almost sunset,” Sykes said, his gaze rising to the ceiling. “Time’s almost up.”

  “Time for what?”

  “For Bill; to kill.” Sykes smiled and aimed his index finger at me, cocked his thumb. “Bang. Bang.”

  “Who am I going to kill?”

  “Obviously; it is me.”

  “You want me to kill you?”

  “Not especially. But I think it’s time.”

  “And why’s that?”

  “The fun is done; old and tired; and just can’t run.”

  “Well, I hate to disappoint you.”

  “No disappointment,” Sykes said. He threw his legs over the edge of the cot and stood. “It’ll happen with or without you. They’ll tear me to shreds.”

  “And who are they?” I backed my chair closer to the wall behind me.

  “Wouldn’t it be swell; if I were to tell?”

  “Where did you go after you killed Arthur last night?”

  “Have I confessed to anything? I think not.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “Into the woods,” said Sykes, “where all fairy tales live.”

  “North? South? What direction?”

  “Couldn’t say, Bill. When you’re scared, your only interest is speed and distance.”

  “So you were scared by something?”

  Sykes snorted a laugh and leaned his face against the bars. “Certainly not by you.”

  “I don’t think you were scared at all. I’m thinking you headed north and found yourself a few more victims.”

  “How seedy; how greedy. I’m neither seedy nor greedy.”

  The man was infuriating, but that was his intent. He wanted to throw me off balance and keep me there with his ridiculous poetry and his cryptic phrases, using verbal craziness to keep from providing any real information. I doubted I could match him with sheer creativity, but I thought about something Bucky had said and decided to throw a curveball of my own.

  “Tell me about Anubis,” I said.

  But Sykes wasn’t fazed. His smile never faltered; he didn’t bat an eye.

  “Just another beast mistaken for a God,” he said. “They couldn’t comprehend, much like you, so they demonized and deified, offering up sacrifices to keep the beast from the threshold so they could sleep a little easier.”

  “You don’t think he’s worth worshipping?”

  “Bill, you’re too concerned with the past. You should be concentrating on the present, because it’s far less comforting. Your friends, your family, they can’t be harmed by dust and history. But they can be harmed.”

  “Are you threatening my family?”

  “A perfect life. A lovely wife,” Sykes sang. He spun away from the bars in a graceful series of steps that took him to the center of
the room. “It must be nice, this perfect life.”

  “Sykes!”

  “I had a beautiful wife,” he said, returning to the cell door. “Her name was Lolita, just like Nabokov’s darling bitch, and she was a seductress, she was. Oh, she did take my tongue on trips. I provided well and was attentive, was a model husband, if I do say so myself. But I had to leave home several times a month, you see. I had issues of my own. Secrets. I’m sure you understand. I always wondered why my Lolita didn’t accept my excuses. They were well thought out, confirmed as well as any truth could be confirmed. She never discovered anything. Not one iota of proof. But she knew. Oh yes, she did. She smelled the deceit on me.”

  “And you think this story applies to me?”

  Sykes lowered his head, brow pressed to the bars. “Don’t you, Bill?”

  “No, Sykes, I really don’t.”

  “Pity. A shitty pity.”

  “So your wife left you. You divorced.”

  This set Sykes to laughing. “No, Bill. We didn’t divorce and she didn’t leave; I tore her throat out with my teeth.”

  Unease returned like wind, whispering over the hairs on my neck. I trembled for a moment, tried to hide it, but it just got worse as I gazed on the amused prisoner facing me.

  “Ready to kill me now?”

  “No. But I think I’ll get back to my desk.” I stood from the chair and pushed it back against the wall. “Thank you.”

  “Oh, but there are so many more questions to ask,” said Sykes.

  I didn’t know why he was trying to keep me in the holding area, didn’t know what he hoped to accomplish by it, but he wasn’t done talking yet.

  “Don’t you want to know why sweet Maggie wasn’t injured?”

  “I’m sure the state boys will supply me with a full report.”

  “Aren’t you the least bit curious?”

  “No, Sykes.”

  But he wasn’t listening. Sykes seemed desperate for me to remain.

  “Because even the beast has some humanity in him. Sometimes people get this idea that it’s all or nothing. It’s all man. Or, it’s all monster. But that’s not the case. The humanity is always there. And the beast is always there.”

  In the abstract, he was talking about compulsion. I’d read plenty about it when it came to sex offenders and serial killers. Though a completely human defect, compulsion didn’t explain what I had seen the night before.

  “You kidnapped a little girl and ate a grown man raw.”

  “It’s the hate, Bill. The beast’s absolute loathing for the species that harbors and subdues it is overpowering. It punishes and feeds; it tears and it bleeds.”

  “But we’re not talking about an ‘it’; we’re talking about you.”

  “I am me. Can’t you see? I am me and he is he. When he is he, I can’t be me. I’d think you of all people would appreciate the distinction I was making.”

  “Really? Maybe I’m a bit dense.”

  “Maybe,” Sykes agreed. “But I can still smell him on you, Bill.”

  I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak. I opened my mouth but nothing came out.

  Then Bucky pushed open the door, holding a foam container with a can of pop balanced on top of it. He looked at me, saw the expression I was wearing and concern spread over his face.

  “Sheriff?” he asked.

  “Leave the food and get out,” I told him. “Don’t disturb us unless the state boys show up.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  —

  I looked at the prisoner, sitting so calmly on his cot, ignoring the chicken dinner I’d slid through the bars, though sipping occasionally from the can of pop. A dozen questions played bumper cars in my skull. Beneath his black eyebrows, his eyes were intense but no longer manic. This man admitted to savagely murdering his wife; this man said he used Maggie Mayflower as bait; this man said he knew a beast, but the beast was not him. On this last point, I believe I understood his cryptic claim. He was not claiming innocence, simply a lack of control.

  “Is the beast coming back tonight?” I asked. “Is that why you said I had until sunset?”

  “You wish it were that simple.”

  “Is it coming back?”

  Sykes dropped the empty pop can on the concrete floor. He raised a fist and flipped out his fingers, counting while he said, “More than one, more than two; oh, whatever, whatever will you do? I think it would be best for you to release me, though I doubt you would. Perhaps you should just shoot me, Bill. It’ll save us both a lot of trouble. You could tell them I was trying to escape.”

  “I’m not the kind of man that shoots an unarmed prisoner.”

  “And what kind of man are you?”

  “Leave me out of this,” I shouted at the old man, still rubbed raw by his earlier comment. “I want to know more about your beast.”

  “Well, you met him last night. Handsome thing, isn’t he?”

  “You think he can get you out of that cage?”

  “Bill, you’re too worried about what can get out. Think about what can get in.”

  “Why don’t you just tell me what can get in?”

  “Oh, the angry ones, they’re no fun. They want to kill, want to scar; because I made them what they are.” Sykes’s amused expression clouded. He leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees and stared through the bars at me. “In short, Bill, you have a pack descending on this town. I imagine they’re the ones who caused your troubles up north. So, here’s what you do. You multiply the beast you saw last night by nine or ten. You take that well-hung Arthur I gnawed and put the faces of all your friends on that body, because that’s what’s going to be left of your little town.”

  “So I’m supposed to just let you out of that cell, let you walk away to save my town from a pack of…what? Werewolves? That’ll look good in the papers.”

  “There’s always the bullet, Bill.” Sykes leaned back against the wall, looked around the cell as he said, “I’d prefer that myself. They won’t be so kind.”

  “Why do they want you?”

  “Superstition. Ignorance. They saw a movie or read a book. They believe there’s a curse they can end by ending me. They got themselves the flu, and they think killing the guy that gave it to them will stop their noses from running.”

  “And strangely enough, they choose now, when you’re locked up, to make this attack. That’s awfully convenient, Sykes.”

  “Not convenient at all.” His voice was weary. He shook his head, slowly at first and then with great ferocity, unsettling his wispy hair. When he spoke again, some of his previous energy had returned. “I took great care to find hunting grounds for the beast far from my home, and I returned only rarely to the places I’d been before. When I kissed my wife goodbye, back when she still had lips, I took the beast into the world, following a calculated pattern of randomness. It is with great sadness that I realize my efforts became predictable. They anticipated this area.”

  “They’d make fine detectives, wouldn’t they?” But even as I delivered that smart-ass comment, I remembered the night before in the midnight woods, feeling that I was not only being stalked, but also surrounded. Thoughts about that rest area up north also creeped in.

  “Oh, the mockery, the shockery,” Sykes said. He climbed from the bed and approached the bars. “They are coming, Bill. They will follow my scent through the streets of your happy town, and they will eat themselves strong every step of the way.”

  Through the frosted glass above Sykes’s head, I saw the dimming light. How long until sunset? An hour? Certainly no more than that.

  As to whether I believed Sykes or not, I couldn’t say. I felt a pressure on my back, no longer the subtle embrace of spirits, but a terrible burden that weighed like a wall I was trying to keep from tumbling down. He was insane, but that didn’t make him wrong. At this same hour the day before, if anyone had suggested I’d be interrogating a monster, I would have laughed it off.

  Truth is, what I was willing to believe had cha
nged dramatically over the last twenty-four hours.

  “If I were you,” Sykes said, “I’d call your friend. His little girl is just swimming in my scent.”

  —

  I didn’t call Les, not at first. The first thing I did was walk into the station’s main room and appraise the building. Brick construction: That was good. A solid door with metal reinforcement (glad I hadn’t had the money to replace it with one of those glass ones I liked). But there was a long window across the front of the building. Another ran in the hallway leading to the lockers and the firing range to the back. My office was sealed up tight, as was the entire back of the building—only a fire door back there, which couldn’t be opened from the outside.

  The windows were the building’s only weakness.

  Bucky gave me a few curious looks, ducked his head back into the book he was reading.

  “Any word from the state boys?” I asked. If those assholes would do their job, Sykes wouldn’t be my problem anymore, but my hope for them was already dried up.

  “No, sir,” he said. “Not a word since about three.”

  “Okay, then get Duke on the phone. I want him here now. The same goes for Ed.”

  “What’s up, Sheriff?” Bucky asked, concern shading his brow.

  “Call it a staff meeting.”

  In my office, I closed the door. While I was dialing the number to my house, my elbow clipped the stapler on my desk. I didn’t even feel it, but I heard it clack on the linoleum, and my heart tripped like hail on a snare drum.

  My eldest, Gwen, answered the phone. Her sweet and shy voice was barely audible.

  “Hey, sweetheart, this is Daddy.”

  “Hi, Daddy. When are you coming home?”

  “Not for a while yet. Can you put your mother on the phone?”

  “She’s sick,” Gwen said. “Her head hurts.”

  Son of a bitch. Two days in a row? My jangled nerves went raw, just plain burned with anger. Even if Gwen or Dru could manage to wake their mother, Lisa would be in no condition to drive. So what was I supposed to do? Leave my kids alone in the house with their zoned-out mother and hope that Sykes was truly delusional, or that the pack he mentioned would find no reason to go to my house? (Would Sykes’s scent be on me? Even if it was, I hadn’t been home since I’d found him incarcerated. Was I close enough to him last night to be tainted?) None of those questions mattered. My children were essentially alone and without defense. I couldn’t just leave them there. Lisa, either, for that matter.