The Queen and I

by Russell Andresen

  She said something about the town knowing that he was coming; how could that be? He had been very careful to see to it that the purchase of the house was anonymous and that nobody, not even the local law, was made aware of his arrival. This was all very disconcerting. He would ignore what she had said for the time being, but store it away in the back of his mind for some further research at another time.

  “I’m flattered,” he replied, trying to be evasive himself. “Maybe you could tell me something about spirits?”

  She looked at him with an inquisitive expression and pried, “What do you know about spirits? What do you want to know?”

  “I just bought an old cabin from a man named Richard Kearney and was wondering if he was into any kind of weird stuffthat you or anyone else might know about.”

  She chuckled softly and said, “Doom and gloom.”

  He stared at her, confused by her answer, and asked, “I’m sorry, but what does that mean?”

  She leaned back in her chair and took a long drag, letting the smoke out slowly, and continued, “Listen to the music.”

  How does she know anything about the music? This was very unsettling, and he wasn’t sure how to proceed.

  “He loves the music, my dear. Listen to the music.”

  “I’m sorry, but what the hell are you talking about? Do you know something that I should know?” He waited for an answer that was not coming. “Were you in my house recently?”

  She looked at him slowly and said in a low whisper, “You will never find me in that house, my dear.” She looked out the window, and he followed her gaze. Sheriff Pitts was coming across the street toward the store, and she continued, “Answers are there to be found if you look hard enough.” She looked at Plutarch’s Lives. “Never stop looking.”

  The mysterious woman rose and quickly escorted him from the store; she practically pushed him and slammed the door shut behind him, closing the curtains as she did.

  Jeffrey looked at the book and suddenly noticed for the first time that there was a bookmark. He pulled it from the book and noticed that there was writing on it. He looked at the sloppy penmanship for a moment before deciphering what it said:

  We’ll talk again. Say nothing. Abby Tisch: Ghost Hunter

  He put the bookmark back where he had found it and waited for the sheriff to reach him.

  Chapter Twenty: Everyone Is a Critic

  Jeffrey returned home after his encounters with the very odd Abby Tisch and then with Sheriff Pitts again. His second encounter with the sheriff was not as cold or suspicious as the last one, but it was interesting to Jeffrey that Pitts just happened to know that Jeffrey had been at the bookstore after he had been so suspicious about his interactions with the members of the town.

  He had asked some obligatory questions about how he was enjoying life in Zion and what he thought about the bookstore. He eventually changed his line of questioning to matters concerning Abby; he seemed to be very interested in speaking about Abby.

  Jeffrey was elusive with his answers and feigned ignorance to most of the questions, while taking record of everything that seemed to be interesting the strange lawman. It was as if the sheriff was trying to piece together a case against Abby Tisch for some reason, and he was being as aloof as Jeffrey was when it came to giving anything away. The only thing that Jeffrey was sure of at this point was that there was something wrong with the citizens of Zion, and they seemed to be dragging him into their dreck against his will.

  He drove back to the cabin after stopping at the specialty food store so that he could pick up some challah bread and chopped liver, along with a couple of bottles of wine, and he quickly opened one bottle, made himself a snack platter of the spread with lightly toasted bread, and sat on the back porch overlooking the lake.

  It was when he returned to the living area that he noticed the mess.

  Papers were strewn about everywhere, and there appeared to be scribbles on most of them. His heart skipped a beat as he immediately thought of the singing and the odd dreams and wondered if there was an intruder in the house. He quickly ran to the kitchen and grabbed a chef knife from the counter and began checking his windows and locks; everything appeared to be in order, and it did not look as if anyone had entered the house without his knowledge.

  He briefly thought about calling the police, but quickly brushed that thought aside. The thought of Malcolm Pitts sniffing about was more distasteful than the notion of an intruder plaguing him. After all, he was a New Yorker; he could handle anything that these country folk threw at him.

  Examining the papers more closely, he realized that someone had left notes all over his outlines for potential scripts and notes about Schultz and Fujikawa. They were very descriptive and even a little harsh. Whoever had written these notes was not holding back his criticism and was definitely showing a real contempt for Jeffrey at the moment.

  He immediately thought of the mysterious Abby Tisch, but he was able to dismiss her as a suspect because she had still been at the store when he left, and whoever was responsible for this disgrace would have needed more time. He also remembered that he had the bookmark with her writing on it, and the handwriting did not match those that were on his notes. If anything, the intruder wrote with a more feminine flare.

  As he examined the notes in more detail, he was shocked to see just how cruel and even personal some of them were; it was as if the person responsible was going out of his or her way to hurt Jeffrey’s feelings, and he didn’t know why.

  His heart skipped a beat as he suddenly thought of Heinrich Schultz and Mendel Fujikawa; could they have possibly found out where he was and were sending him a message? That was certainly within the realm of possibility. As with any men of power, they had resources that sometimes make the impossible possible. The citizens of Zion had seemed to have no trouble figuring out that he was coming to their town, so it was definitely within reason to believe that Schultz had found him.

  But this didn’t seem like Schultz’s style, and even if it was, why would he still be interested in tormenting Jeffrey? He had won, the damage had been done, and there was nothing that Jeffrey could do to stop what had happened. No, it had to be someone else.

  The scribbling on his notes intrigued him because, even though a bit harsh in its language, it seemed to ooze with the feeling of coming from a person who was as passionate about Broadway as Jeffrey was. This was not a random act of vandalism; this had been done with a deliberate hand, and the person behind the notes had set out to make Jeffrey think there was something wrong with his work.

  He read through remarks like:

  “What do you intend to do with this?”

  “I’ve seen that before.”

  “Try some originality.”

  “Do you think the audience is stupid?”

  “Do you always plagiarize?”

  “You should call your next play, I Have No Talent.”

  “No wonder you’re washed up.”

  The last one really hit close to home. Who could have possibly been behind something so personal and factual about his current state of affairs? Who else, other than Rachel and his closest associates, knew exactly what was being done to him? Was there something in the way that he was writing that was giving away his lack of vision and struggles with creativity?

  All of these questions left him wondering if maybe it was his own subconscious that was behind this; perhaps he was the one writing these notes, and his own personal defense mechanisms had changed the style of penmanship.

  Whatever the reasons or whoever was behind it, he was left with more questions than he had answers, and it only drove him deeper into confusion and despair.

  * * *

  What kind of a schmendrick was he dealing with? Everything that had been done to his notes was specifically designed to let this schmuck know that he was not alone in the cabin and that there was somebody else working closely with him.

  How was he supposed to work with a man who wore such heavy blinders
and could not see the forest for the trees? Here the ghost was trying to help this putz and the only thing that he could do was walk around his house and check his locks, grab a chef knife, and, from the looks of him, contemplate whether or not he was going to call that insufferable sheriff nudnik.

  Try as hard as he wanted to, the ghost was becoming angry with Mr. Jeffrey David Rothstein. The ghost was a professional, he had once been the star, the people used to line up to see him, and now he was offering his services to a man who clearly lacked any imagination at all.

  He figured that Jeffrey must have seen that lunatic, Abby Tisch, by now and that she had given him some kind of warning that there was something afoot with the house, and yet, he still could not see the very simple clues that were being left in front of him.

  The ghost decided that he was going to have to use another form of contact, one that he had not used in years, and one that could only end in one of two ways.

  Either Jeffrey would see the wonder that was presenting itself to him as a servant to guide and assist in his endeavors, or the playwright would go insane with fear and do the same thing that the horrible Richard Kearney and all of those before him had done, leave.

  Whatever the result, it was clear now to the ghost that he would achieve nothing by playing this game of cat and mouse anymore; he needed to be more assertive, he needed to use a blunter instrument, and he needed to find something to wear.

  Chapter Twenty-One: Like Mother, Like Son

  Louis Grecko arrived home to his Brighton Beach apartment that he shared with his mother, Cloris, and set his keys on the stand next to the door. He slowly and quietly walked down the hallway to the living room, careful not to wake his mother due to the late hour. He knew that he should have called when he was out to let her know that he would be late, but he had not anticipated seeing the young couple on the train who had so intrigued him.

  He had spotted them while on his way home from seeing Heinrich and gotten off at their exit on the D train at Kings Highway and followed them up the busy avenue to their apartment building. He had waited outside until the sun went down when the odds of anyone noticing him entering the building’s courtyard was diminished thanks to nightfall. He waited there until it was time to enter the building through the front door.

  It was one of the rare pleasures in his otherwise horrific life that he could enjoy and make his own. Nothing else exhilarated him the way the hunt and eventual capture did. Try as he might to find a hobby or some other kind of release, the hunt was the only thing that brought him real pleasure, that and his love of musicals and the ability to sing to his mother and Heinrich in that perfect soprano.

  He watched carefully as the couple entered the building and saw the female stop at the mailboxes in the wall in the lobby. He made a mental note of where she was standing so that he could figure out what apartment number they lived in later. Louis bid his time until some irresponsible neighbor left the building and was stupid enough to hold the door open for him; people nowadays were still trusting to the point that they didn’t ask another’s business when entering a residential building. The way they saw it, there were too many people to know all of the other residents friends and acquaintances, so it was best to just mind your own business.

  Examining the mailboxes, he was quite certain that he could narrow down the apartments to two or three possible candidates; he checked each one by knocking on the door to determine who his prey had been by gazing into their confused faces. This was admittedly a dangerous way of going about things, but Louis had learned from past experiences that most people had a way of not paying much attention to his face because he was so painful to look at.

  He tried two doors and was met by an elderly woman who refused to open the door and threatened to call the cops, and a young Latino man who thought Louis was the pizza delivery guy. The young man reeked of marijuana and beer, and Louis briefly considered adding him to his shopping list of terror, but then thought otherwise. The thoughts of that young couple were intoxicating to him at this point, and he needed to quench his thirst.

  The third door rewarded Louis for his patience; he had found his prey and they were as unassuming and innocent as he had hoped. They truly had no idea that they were part of his favorite game and that these upcoming hours were going to be the worst and the last of their young lives.

  For a large man, Louis was deceptively fast, and overpowering the young man was no problem for him. Louis rendered him unconscious with a single blow to the temple and charged into the apartment before the girl could coax the scream from her lungs, the shock of what she had just seen slowing her senses. He grabbed hold of her, squeezed her throat tight enough to render her unconscious without killing her, and laid her body on the bed. He returned for the boy and used the pull strings from the venetian blinds to tie him to a kitchen chair.

  Louis sat in the dimly lit bedroom and watched as the two soon-to-be-victims slept off the initial attack, and pondered his various options of what he could and would do to them. It was one thing to pick them out of a crowd, hunt them down, and then overpower them. That was the easy part, but his mother had taught him over the span of his lifetime so many clever ways to hurt people before killing them that he was having trouble deciding on a method. Torture was probably the most enjoyable option, since he loved the challenge of doing it while keeping his victims quiet enough to not alert any neighbors. He also enjoyed finding his implements of torture from everyday household items.

  He found some duct tape and stripped the girl naked and bound her hands behind her back before waking her. As soon as she regained consciousness and realized the horrible position that she was in, she tried to scream, but Louis quickly placed a large hand over her mouth and smiled. He loved the vibrating feel against his palm as a victim tried to scream through his hand.

  Louis shoved a rolled up sock in her mouth and covered it with another piece of duct tape. He stood back and admired her naked body in the half shadows of the room; he watched as the lines of her midsection heaved up and down as she struggled to catch her breath. Her eyes gave away the terror she was feeling.

  He lit a cigarette and took a deep, long drag, releasing the smoke very slowly into her face, watching as she struggled to cough through her gagged mouth. Tears were building in her eyes as she wondered what this odd creature was going to do to her. Louis smiled and even laughed a bit at her discomfort and turned to the boy; it was time for the boy to wake up.

  Louis took another sock, shoved it into his mouth, covered it with another piece of tape, and slowly extinguished the cigarette on the forehead of the young man. The girl screamed in horror through her gag, a muffled roar of shock and fear. The boy woke, and after a brief, stunned moment, let out a cry of his own at the realization of what was being done to him.

  Their captor took a seat on the edge of the bed and gently rubbed the girl’s right breast, while taking exceptional notice of her nipple. Rage filled the boy’s eyes as he struggled to free himself from his binds, and he kicked violently against the floor. Louis could not have this, so he quickly punched the young man across the jaw and taped his legs to the chair.

  “Mother doesn’t like it when you make noise,” Louis said to the young man. He leaned in close and whispered into his ear, “What kind of fun should we have?”

  The young man’s eyes went wide with confusion and fear as his evening was about to take a terrible turn. For the next couple of hours, the young couple experienced the worst kind of horrors as Louis Grecko administered amputations, extractions, and severed several body parts. Blood was everywhere, and Louis admired the way that it flowed across the floor and how it pooled and soaked into the mattress. It was an amazing thing to watch, blood. It had a mind of its own, unlike water that just looked for the easiest way to move and flow from one point to another. Blood had its own way of doing things; it was like a stubborn serpent that refused to accept the fact that its way was blocked.

  He gathered up his souvenirs and made his
quiet exit from the building, running into no witnesses on the way out. When he got back to the train station, he placed a 911 call and alerted the police to the two mangled corpses in their apartment. Their bodies would be discovered shortly, and they would be spared the indecency of rotting to the point of becoming malodorous. If there was one thing that Louis and his mother hated, it was when a body was left out to the point of stinking; that could not be tolerated.

  He sat in his favorite chair in the living room and admired the Ziplock bag that he had stolen to hold his mementos in and wondered if the police had arrived yet. Surely they would be on to the fact that this had been done by the same person who had been leaving bodies like this around New York City for the last twenty years; they were still no closer now than ever before to finding him or naming any suspects. His mother had taught him well, and he was always careful to leave behind no trace evidence.

  His mother had been a member of the infamous Mossad, that being before she married out of the Jewish faith, and had learned various ways of torture and how to not get caught. Cloris Weiner had taught her son what she had learned.

  His attention now shifted to the mysterious new object for his hunt, the man who Heinrich wanted him to find, the one he was not allowed to kill, Jeffrey David Rothstein.

  The last part was what troubled him the most; he had never done a hunt before that did not end in the eventual death of the victim. Sometimes death came quickly, other times it was a long, drawn-out enterprise that left him exhausted and exhilarated at the same time.

  He knew very little about the man he was now pursuing, only that he was very important to Heinrich and the little sissy who was in his office. He knew that the man was a famous person and that he loved Broadway, so that troubled Louis a little. Louis loved Broadway; he loved everything about the theater, especially musicals, and the thought that he was being asked to hunt down and possibly cause harm to an artist who only made others happy with his plays was something that Louis would normally turn down and probably attack the man who asked such a thing of him. But this was Heinrich who was asking the favor, and he never said no to Heinrich Schultz.