“What do those assholes want?” Jeremy asked, himself more than Fallon.
The phone rang. Fallon jumped then fumbled with it.
“Give it to me,” Jeremy said once Fallon had steadied his grip on the cell.
Fallon read the small rectangular window on the front of the device. “It’s an unavailable number.”
“Give it to me.”
The phone continued to ring.
“If you answer this phone, we’re dead,” Fallon said.
“Give-me-my-phone.”
Fallon extended his arm over the roof of the car and handed Jeremy the phone. He then took a few cautious steps back, his expression of someone about to watch a balloon pop, his stance of a man ready to sprint.
Jeremy flipped the phone open. Fallon flinched.
“Hello?”
“Jeremy?” A man’s voice.
“Yeah?”
“Jeremy Marsh?”
“Yeah—who’s this?”
The line went dead.
“Who is it?” Fallon asked, still in a ready stance. “Who is it?”
In the movies Jeremy had always thought it ridiculous when someone continued trying to speak to the other end of a dead phone, sometimes even after the dial tone had sounded. Now it seemed to make sense. It wasn’t ignorance that kept you talking and trying in the face of sure futility; it was a desperate fear, an innate response that was out of his own mouth before he could draw ironic similarities between he and the celluloid dummies he used to mock on the big screen. “Hello? Hello?”
The engine revved on the idling car making its headlights jump.
Fallon hollered over the engine. “What did they say?!”
The car roared a final time then slammed into reverse, semi-circling backwards, its tires screeching, its rear shimmying like a thick metallic tail.
The white and red lights on the rear of the car faced them now. There was a brief pause where neither man breathed. A second screech—both men jumped—and the car shot from its spot as though on a race track.
Jeremy watched the car speed away. Checking the license plate occurred far too late to him and he cursed himself for it. He lowered the phone from his ear, and looked at Fallon over the hood of his car. “Was that…?”
Fallon nodded, a strange mix of gratification and fear on his ugly face. “You believe me now, kid?”
Jeremy looked down at his phone, brought it to his ear one last time, and then finally snapped it shut. “I don’t…I don’t understand…”
“Well that’s a start I guess. Come on, we need to go.” Fallon moved the CD case, lowered himself into the passenger seat, and closed the door.
Jeremy paused, standing by the driver’s side. On any other night in his life he would have already been on the road with this stranger left far behind. Yet something tugged at his psyche—stoked the growing fire that was his paranoia. This man, this Bret Oliver Fallon, did not seem the con man or unstable veteran Jeremy had originally pegged him to be. Perhaps there was validity to his wild allegations. The mystery car and anonymous phone call certainly added weight to those claims.
Fallon leaned to his left and rapped his knuckles on the driver’s window, shaking Jeremy from his daze. “Let’s go!”
Jeremy’s instincts told him to obey; to go forward so he could hear the man’s entire story concerning the death of his mother. And if Jeremy believed that story to be credible? If all the facts were presented, seemed legit, and pointed to murder? Well then he would ask for two things from Fallon:
First, he would take Fallon up on his earlier offer for help so that Jeremy would not become the next ‘accident.’
And second, he would ask the former soldier for his professional advice—to help him avenge the murder of his beloved mother.
As it would turn out, Fallon’s earlier offer involved accomplishing both those things.
3
Jeremy and Fallon sat in his mother’s living room—Fallon on the sofa, Jeremy across from him on the edge of the coffee table, his hands wringing one another dry.
“You sure it was a good idea to come here?” Jeremy asked. “Wouldn’t this be the first place they’d look?”
Fallon shook his head and leaned back into the sofa. He looked painfully exhausted, his skin worse than before—of this Jeremy was now certain. It reminded him of barnacles on the underside of an old boat. He even spotted it on his hands. His fingernails looked recently gone; the tips seeped and glistened puss.
“No,” Fallon said. “They’re not stupid. Taking you out here would be blatant and foolish. They want it to look like an accident. Like your mother.”
Jeremy rubbed his hands back and forth over his knees. Sitting still was impossible. “Okay,” he said, “I’m listening.”
Fallon licked his lips. “I could really use a drink.”
Jeremy was annoyed with the request. He was eager to hear what Fallon had to say, but if a drink would hurry things up, then so be it. “I think there’s whiskey and wine.”
“Whiskey.”
Jeremy went to his mother’s liquor cabinet, and returned with a tall Collins glass filled to the rim with whiskey; he did not want to have to get up in the middle of things to fetch him a refill.
Fallon thanked him, and gulped a third of it as if it were iced tea. “I was shot through the lung in Iraq,” he said. “I suppose I was lucky. One inch over and it would have split my spine in two.”
“So you were ultimately sent to my mom’s hospital.”
Fallon nodded, took another gulp. “We hit it off fairly quick. She was different than most nurses. She truly seemed to care, you know?”
Jeremy hung his head. He no longer felt capable of crying, but the pain still vibrated throughout his head and shook his vision.
“You alright?” Fallon asked.
Jeremy brought his head up quickly and breathed in. “Keep going.”
“We talked a lot. She told me all about you—that you wanted to be a doctor. Told me that your father left when you were young, and that it’s been just you and her ever since.” He paused for a moment, seemingly sure that Jeremy may need another minute to collect himself. When Jeremy didn’t flinch he continued.
“I had trouble breathing and was in constant pain. So one day your mom says that me and a few other veterans are going to be transferred to a different wing to undergo some new kind of treatment that would speed up our recovery and help with the pain.
“I had no problem with that. Hell, I’d have taken heroin if they offered it, I was hurting so bad.” He took another gulp of whiskey. “So they start giving us these shots. Once a week we got them—and they were absolutely wonderful. Stopped the pain instantly and made you feel like you could hop out of bed and dance…for a little while. But you know, the stuff may as well have been heroin because once that blissful feeling wore off you were worse than before—like coming down from the ultimate high. And it wasn’t just a feeling of withdrawal, it was like a true illness, you know? Guys were puking blood and shaking something awful. One guy had a seizure.
“I used to ask your mom if she could give us more than the usual once a week, but she said it was out of her hands; she was following specific orders from Dr. Tate. He was the main man in charge of this whole thing—the move to the new wing, the new drug.
“During the third week I knew something was wrong. We were getting sicker. The highs were short-lived, and when we came down, we came down hard. Your mom suspected something was wrong too. She asked around—wanted to know just what it was they were giving us, and most importantly, why we were getting worse.”
Fallon looked off and went into a daze. Jeremy knew he was back at the hospital, re-living it. Fallon blinked, shook his head, and took another swallow from his glass.
“Your mom got the run around—a bunch of shrugs and ‘I don’t knows.’ So she did some digging of her own.” Fallon reached into his coat and pulled out a bunch of papers rolled tight into a tube. “She found this.” He handed it to
Jeremy.
Jeremy thumbed through the papers. One particular bit of text stood out. He lifted his eyes off the paper and looked at Fallon. “Chemical warfare?”
“We were guinea pigs,” Fallon said. “We were literally melting from the inside out.”
Jeremy pointed to Fallon’s face. “Is that…is that why…” He didn’t know the right way to ask such a thing. Suppose it wasn’t?
But it was. And as Fallon ran his hand over his rotted skin he confirmed it. “I’m deteriorating by the day. After the fourth treatment everyone in that wing died—dissolved like an overhead sprinkler of acid had been set off. I’ll never forget the smell.”
“But not you,” Jeremy said.
Fallon sipped his whiskey. The big glass was nearly empty now. “I never got the fourth treatment. Once your mom found out what was going on, she got me the hell out of there. Snuck me out during her nightshift, and then checked me into a motel. She wanted to save the others but they were too far gone. She wept hard for them.”
Jeremy looked down at the pages again. “You’ve been following me haven’t you?” He looked up. “Ever since my mom died.”
Fallon nodded and continued as though the question was irrelevant, and by now Jeremy supposed it was.
“Your mom said she was going to get me help,” Fallon said. “All things considered, I suppose I’m actually worse off than everyone back at the hospital—they melted after that fourth treatment like wax in a microwave. After only three treatments I’m melting, but it’s more like a candle that drips slowly. Sometimes I wonder if I’d be better off in the microwave just to put an end to it.” He looked away again before continuing. “Anyway, your mom told me she’d meet up with me back at the motel the next day. She never showed up…I don’t need to tell you why.”
Jeremy held up the papers. “We need to show someone this. Expose these bastards.”
Fallon smiled a pitiful smile. “Like I said, kid—there are higher powers at work here. It would be the very definition of useless.”
“Then we at least need to try and get you some help. Get you to a hospital or—”
Fallon shook his head, cutting Jeremy off. “I’m already dead, kid. If it wasn’t for you, I’d do myself right now and end it all.”
“Wasn’t for me?”
“I wanna help you, like your mom tried to help me. This Dr. Tate is the epitome of evil—I saw it in his eyes even before they started treating us. I’d put him right up there with Mengele, twisted experiments and all.” Fallon finished his whiskey in one giant gulp. “He’ll come looking for you. I’m absolutely certain of it.”
“Because he thinks my mother told me everything.”
“Yep.”
“So what do I do? I mean how could you possibly help me?”
“I’m gonna help you kill Tate,” he said as matter-of-factly as someone offering help with a simple chore.
“You what?”
“You need to get rid of Tate before he gets rid of you.”
Jeremy’s eyes grew wide with fear, but only for a tick. They soon narrowed when previous thoughts of vengeance surfaced. He stared hard at Fallon with an indignation that was foreign to him. “He’s the one who’s responsible for my mother’s murder?”
Fallon stared back, his steel expression providing a better response than words.
“Then I’ll do it,” Jeremy said.
Fallon nodded once.
“And afterwards?” Jeremy asked.
“What do you mean?”
“After I get rid of Tate. There’s going to be others aren’t there? The higher powers?”
“Getting rid of Tate is a good start—he carries a lot of weight. It will definitely slow them down and buy us time.”
“But you don’t have much time.”
“I know. But I promise you, I will not leave this earth until I know a madman like Dr. Tate is dead…and I figured you just might be the one who wanted to do it…to save your ass for the time being…” He sneered and looked like he wanted to spit “…and to kill the son of a bitch who murdered your mother.”
Jeremy matched his sneer. “You figured right.”
* * *
Fallon pulled a second something from his coat pocket that night. It was a Bluetooth mobile phone.
“What’s that for?”
“Your cell phone is already compromised. This is a new number—something inconspicuous you can wear on your ear when I talk you through everything.”
“Talk me through what?”
“You ever killed anyone before, Jeremy?”
Jeremy dropped his head and shook it.
“If we’re gonna track down Tate and get rid of him, then you’re gonna need someone like me to talk you through it.”
Fallon handed the Bluetooth to Jeremy. He held it in his palm and studied it.
“You still think you can do it?” Fallon asked. “If not, then I—”
“I can do it,” Jeremy said. The words came easier than he thought—he only needed to think about his mother for a split second before they shot from his mouth.
“You’ll have to get physical, Jeremy; I don’t have a gun. But you’re young and fit, and Tate is old. You shouldn’t have any trouble. The tricky part will be entering his home and catching him by surprise before he has a chance to call for help. Again, I can talk you through that.”
“How do you know where he lives?”
“Did some digging of my own.”
“So no gun,” Jeremy said. “What will I use? A knife?”
“No—not in the hands of a novice. It would get messy and take forever. We should go blunt trauma all the way. A few good whacks and it’s done.”
“My mother bought me a cricket bat when we visited England two years ago.”
“A gift from your mom?” Fallon smirked. “How appropriate.”
4
3 a.m.
Jeremy was parked a block from Dr. Tate’s home, the Bluetooth snug against his ear, the cricket bat in the back seat. Fallon was still at Jeremy’s mother’s house, his health fading.
“You there?” Jeremy asked.
“I’m here. You alright?”
“Scared.”
“I know. Use the memory of your mother to give you strength. I’ll be with you the entire time.”
“Okay.” Jeremy reached up and clicked off the interior light so it would not shine when he opened the door. He moved swiftly, exiting the driver’s side then snatching the cricket bat from the back seat in seconds. He headed down the sidewalk towards Tate’s home, the cricket bat tight to the length of his body to hide its protrusion.
He could feel his pulse in his head and chest—pounding thumps blocking out all else. The faster he walked, the harder the thumps. He questioned his ability to hear.
“You still there?” he asked Fallon.
The voice came back shockingly loud and clear and Jeremy flinched. “I’m here, kid, I’m here. Where are you?”
Jeremy was close to jogging now. His adrenaline was surging—blood flooding his skin and burning it, his stomach a swirled mess. “I’m nearly there. His house is just ahead.”
“Okay—now remember, he’s sure to have an alarm system. You know how to get past that.”
“You’re sure about this?”
“The last thing he would expect is for you to ring his doorbell.”
Jeremy was one house away. He felt his bladder and bowels threaten to empty. “He’ll recognize me though the window. Won’t he recognize me through the window?”
“We’ve been through this, Jeremy. His curiosity will open the door, I promise you. When he does you can’t hesitate. Move inside quickly and shut the door behind you. His confusion will buy you time. Don’t waste it. Hit his head—nothing else. Keep hitting until he doesn’t have a pulse. You can do this. Think about your mother, Jeremy. This man murdered your mother...”
“I’m—”
“…And unless you do this, you’re going to be next.”
He w
as outside the front door. His voice was a cracked whisper. “I’m here.”
“Do it.”
Jeremy rang the doorbell. He could hear it echo from inside—a melodic symphony of chimes. There was an agonizing pause. Jeremy gripped the bat’s handle so hard his hands cramped. He felt feverish. He wanted to puke.
An outdoor light clicked on. Jeremy winced.
“He’s coming.”
“Do it, Jeremy.”
An older man wearing rimless glasses appeared at the thin rectangular window parallel to the front door. He looked confused and annoyed. He did not open the door; he spoke through the glass.
“Can I help you?” he called.
Jeremy’s voice was a frantic whisper now. “He’s not opening the door, he’s not opening the door...”
“Kick it down! Kick it down!”
Jeremy did not hesitate. He took a step back and rammed his foot into the wood. The door exploded open knocking Dr. Tate backward, tumbling to the ground. An alarm sounded. Tate scooted backwards across his foyer, his mouth opening and closing, presumably pleading for help; Jeremy couldn’t hear. He could only hear Fallon—his roars of approval fueling Jeremy’s limbs and replacing all trepidations with bloodlust.
Jeremy brought the cricket bat high into the air and whipped it down with an almighty force onto the crown of Tate’s head—the alarm and Fallon’s shouts robbing Jeremy of the sickening crack that filled the room. The old man’s legs shook violently as he convulsed.
Jeremy was hardly finished.
He smashed down onto Tate’s skull repeatedly, deforming its shape, releasing spatters of red in all directions. He thought of his mother, and although he was now sure Tate had to be dead, he raised the bat again to deliver a final, righteous blow for her memory. But instead his world went black.
5
The only reason Detective Cooper was standing in the middle of Anne Marsh’s living room was because of the assailant’s mention of an accomplice during questioning. Otherwise it would be an open and shut case: Jeremy Marsh had broken into an elderly man’s home and beaten him to death with a cricket bat.
WARPED: A Collection of Short Horror, Thriller, and Suspense Fiction Page 23