The Piper

by Lynn Hightower

The parrot gave Olivia the benefit of his noble profile, then tucked his head under one wing. He was quiet today, almost sleepy. Maybe it was the rainy afternoon.

  Ackerman was wearing gray sweatpants and a Vandy football jersey, and she too had on ridiculously thick ugly socks. She sat down on the leather loveseat in front of the coffee table and waited for Olivia to set everything up. Ackerman was different today. Edgier maybe. Focused. Like me, Olivia thought, when I see a client at work.

  Olivia turned the Mac on, then took the bootleg copy of Hugh’s autopsy report out of the envelope and handed it over.

  ‘McTavish got that for me this morning.’

  Ackerman began to flip through the pages.

  ‘You’ll see that two of Hugh’s fingers were broken and his left thumbnail was torn out.’ Olivia settled on the couch beside Ack, tilting the computer screen. Then she was up again, walking to the window, looking out. ‘There’s a circle of contusions on his right ankle,’ she said, over her shoulder. She looked out at the magnolia tree, watching the droplets of water slide off the heavy waxy leaves. ‘One of his ribs was cracked. Left side again, like the fingers. Death caused by hanging. Strangulation, a slow asphyxiation. He didn’t break his neck. If you look, you’ll see the medical examiner made a note of that.’

  Patsy Ackerman set the papers to one side of the coffee table. ‘You saw him? Right after it happened?’

  ‘Yes. I helped cut him down.’

  ‘But you saw where it happened?’

  ‘Yes. In the upstairs hallway of my house. He was hanging from the support struts over the attic fan from a red leather belt, just like . . . just like the threat.’

  ‘What else did you notice?’

  Olivia turned away from the window. ‘Two of the spindles on the railing in the hall were broken in half. And one of Hugh’s shoes had fallen off. It was sideways by the wall.’

  ‘And that’s when you picked the Blackberry up?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you haven’t shown it to the police?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He recorded it? The death?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Ackerman rubbed her forehead. ‘Bear with me a minute, I’m trying to picture this.’

  ‘You don’t have to picture it, you can watch.’

  ‘Start it up then. You can go in the kitchen, if you’d rather. You don’t have to see this right now.’

  Olivia settled down beside Patsy Ackerman on the couch, as far to her side as she could go. She owed it to Hugh to watch, as many times as it took, felt compelled to watch the video time and time again, taking note of how long those legs had kicked, timing exactly how long Hugh had suffered at the end of that red leather belt.

  She slid the disc where she’d copied the video into the slot on the side of her laptop, waited for the program to open, then hit play.

  Ackerman caught her breath. ‘Do you know what that noise is? In the background?’ she asked.

  Olivia found talking almost impossible. ‘Attic fan,’ she managed.

  ‘But it was off when the police arrived?’

  ‘As far as I know.’

  ‘I’ll be damned,’ Ackerman whispered, sounding like a scientist at a microscope. She gave Olivia a quick glance. ‘I keep thinking I hear a dog barking in the background. Do you hear it too?’

  Olivia tried to say yes, but had to settle for a nod.

  Ackerman watched the rest of the way through, sobbed softly, and held Olivia’s hand.

  ‘Take it,’ Ack said.

  Olivia tried to wrap her fingers around the tiny little cup but could not seem to grip it in her hands. It was too hot. It was burning her palms, but she could not seem to force the words and explain. She shoved the cup back at Ackerman and looked down at her knees.

  ‘It’s okay to cry,’ Ackerman told her. ‘I’m crying. I’ve got tissues.’

  Olivia laughed. Tissues, the one thing she always had. Tissues in her purse, on the front seat of her car, in the pockets of her jeans, and a motherlode of used ones wadded beneath the pillows of the bed in Hugh’s room at the hotel.

  Olivia wanted to turn the computer off but it was hard to move. Crying was impossible as well. She had cried enough. Everything was tight now in her chest and she could not imagine being able to even make a noise. There were things to do. Things to do.

  ‘Well?’ Olivia said, when she could finally speak.

  Ack roamed around the room, talking softly to the parrot, then looked back at Olivia. ‘What exactly do you want from me?’

  ‘Want? I don’t know. Help? I just – I want to know what I’m up against here. I want to know how to get my daughter back.’

  ‘If I knew how to get your daughter back, don’t you think I’d have told you by now?’

  Olivia leaned forward and shut the computer down and began to pack up her things. That was it then. No hope here. She would try something else, God knew what.

  ‘Look, don’t go,’ Ackerman said softly. ‘Try that espresso. I got some very nice beans from Sumatra. It’s free trade coffee, expensive but good and guilt free. No farmers were exploited in the brewing of that coffee.’

  Olivia stood up, slung the briefcase over her shoulder.

  ‘Look, Olivia, I just don’t know how I can help.’

  Olivia nodded. Headed for the door.

  ‘Let me think about this. We could meet again tomorrow.’

  ‘No. Thanks.’ Olivia went through the studio, the kitchen, snatched up the soggy shoes she had left by the door. Putting them on was a struggle. Ackerman was talking to her, but Olivia shut it out, though she finally had to sit on the floor like a toddler to get those shoes back on her feet.

  Outside, it was raining even harder. The drops pelted Olivia’s head and ran down her face, and turned the leather of the briefcase dark. She’d left the car unlocked, thank God. Was Ackerman watching her from the house? She had the vague impression that Ackerman had said goodbye and closed the front door.

  Her hands were damned unsteady, and it took three tries to get the key into the ignition. She turned the heat up high, and the wipers on, and rested her forehead against the steering wheel. It felt good, how quickly the car warmed up. She focused on nothing more than the rhythmic drone of the wiper blades, and breathing slowly in and out.

  What the fuck was she going to do now?

  She was alone. She had no right, really, to ask anyone else to help. Not with everyone dead, Hugh, Amelia, Chris. Hugh had said Teddy was alive. She had to hold that in her heart. Teddy was alive. Olivia would not give up.

  So she would go to the house and take this presence, this evil thing on face to face. If it had a face. Would it offer her a deal? How did that happen, exactly? Would she agree? Chris had. So had Amelia. What kind of arrangement did Hugh make? He said he had tricked it, then wound up hanging from the red leather belt.

  But she could go down fighting, if nothing else. She didn’t have to win.

  When the passenger door opened it was so unexpected that Olivia banged her head into the top of the steering wheel. She had not noticed Patsy Ackerman walking down the front lawn to her car in the dark and the rain.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Olivia asked.

  Ack had a dark hoodie on over the sweats, and had jammed her feet into those same pirate boots she had worn the day they’d met. ‘The question is what are you doing.’

  ‘Taking a moment to pull myself together before I go back to my hotel.’

  ‘Don’t lie to me, I’m psychic, remember?’

  ‘I thought you only talked to dark things.’

  ‘It didn’t always used to be that way. And besides, your thoughts are pretty dark now.’

  ‘Look, get out of my car will you? I want to go.’

  ‘That’s fine, go ahead. I’ll go with you. Come on, Olivia, I know exactly where you’re going and what you think you’re going to do, and I’m not going to let you. Anger can make you very stupid. You just saw what happened to Hugh.’

  ‘Th
ank you so much for your concern. Now get the fuck out of my car.’ Olivia braced her hands on the steering wheel. ‘No? Fine then. Come with me. You’ll be sorry.’

  ‘I already am.’

  Olivia drove slowly, with great precision and care. Anger could be magnificent. People always underestimated the power of a good hard rage. The trick was to control it, rather than let it control you. It was a skill you could learn but you did have to work at it. Olivia was working at it right now.

  Ack grabbed the door handle and leaned forward when Olivia turned into the driveway of the house. Olivia parked sideways at the top of the drive, facing the sunroom window, right where she’d parked it the night Teddy disappeared. She left the headlights on, just like she had that night, and the light glared off the windows. She could see that the broken window in the kitchen had been boarded up. Who had done that and when? Had it been like that the night Hugh had died? She could not remember. No matter how hard she tried.

  Olivia kept the engine running. It was a stupid fear, but she could not get rid of the idea that if she turned the engine off in this driveway it might not start back up again.

  ‘Hugh did exactly this,’ Ack said. ‘Went in angry, spoiling for a fight. You see where it got him.’

  ‘My little girl is missing. What else am I supposed to do? There isn’t anyone out there to help me.’

  ‘Yes there is.’

  ‘Who? You’ve turned me down. There’s nobody else left.’

  ‘I wasn’t talking about me. But you aren’t alone with this. Help is constantly being offered, the universe will send you help, if you recognize it. If you ask.’

  ‘I don’t get what you mean. And you won’t help. I’ve asked every way I know how.’

  ‘I haven’t turned you down, Olivia. I’m just . . . I failed. I was meant to warn Hugh and—’

  ‘You did warn him.’

  ‘Not well enough.’

  ‘All those pictures you drew, without a mouth? He was silenced?’

  ‘To say the least.’

  ‘Fine. Let them silence me now. I can’t just sit around and wait anymore. I have to do something. I don’t even know if . . . if Teddy is alive. If there’s even a point to this anymore. At least Hugh. He’s dead. At least he doesn’t have to worry anymore.’

  Ack put a hand on her arm. ‘I don’t get what you think you can do, Olivia. Don’t you understand that whatever this is – it’s just playing games.’

  ‘But why us? Why my family?’

  ‘Imagine this, Olivia. Imagine that you are alone and in the dark and you are lost and in pain and you’re afraid.’

  ‘You mean like now.’

  ‘Fine, like now. And you see a light. What are you going to do?’

  ‘Go to the light.’

  ‘Exactly. But you’re the light. Teddy is the light. Your brother was the light. Dark things want help – but the only way for them is to go back to . . . how should I put this? Pure self. Pure energy. Back, if you will, to the source. So it’s stuck. Because help, real help, means a sort of death. So whatever it is . . . it comes in pain and it seeks relief and every manifestation is a cry for help. But the end of pain is the end of life and it fights to grow and live. Release is death, so it never lets go.’

  ‘Is that supposed to make some kind of sense to me, Yoda?’

  Ackerman gave her a small half smile. ‘Put it this way. This thing is having some fun, but it’s also really angry. It wants to live. So it’s drawn to innocence and good and it goes for the weak.’

  ‘Children. The Pied Piper.’

  Ackerman nodded. ‘Something like that. The light doesn’t need the dark, but the dark needs the light.’

  ‘Whatever that means. All I want is my little girl.’

  ‘Look, I’ll commit. I’ll help. But I’m not magic, Olivia. All I can do is my best.’

  Olivia took a deep breath. ‘I get what I’m asking, you know.’

  ‘Yeah. I wonder about that.’

  ‘What did you mean, before, when you said you used to be able to know the good things, when you said you were psychic? Has it always been this way for you? Only talking to dark things, like you said?’

  Ack rubbed a hand over her face. ‘No. It didn’t used to be like this.’

  ‘What happened? When did it change?’

  ‘Fifteen years ago. At the Waverly. That’s when it happened to me.’

  ‘The Waverly? The—’

  ‘Body Chute. Yes. You begin to see a pattern here, right?’

  ‘Like Chris. And Bennington. And Jamison. So what do we do first?’

  ‘We? I meditate and plan and ask for help. One’s mental state is crucial and you have to have a plan.’

  ‘Meditate? That’s it?’

  ‘Whatever has latched onto your daughter, to your family, don’t you get how strong it is? So be patient for God’s sake, and let me get prepared.’

  ‘But what am I supposed to do? Do you want me to talk to Bennington? He and Chris were in on this together, before Chris died. Do you know how to get in touch with Bennington?’

  ‘Yes, and if you want to talk to him that’s fine, but I don’t think he’s going to be much help. He’s a victim, just like you. The best thing you can do, Olivia, is hold tight. Right now just drive me back to my place, go back to your hotel and stay out of this house. I don’t like even being in this driveway, after dark.’

  Olivia put the car in reverse, and faced it out to the street. She had just started down the driveway when Ack twisted sideways and looked back.

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘What?’ Olivia said. But she saw it. The light in the kitchen had come on. ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘To do? I want you to get the hell out. That light is an invitation.’

  ‘Maybe you’re right, maybe it’s my invitation. Maybe I can make a deal with it, just like everybody else.’

  ‘Yes. Like everybody else, like your brother, Chris. And look what happened to him.’

  ‘He paid the piper, but his little girl is alive.’

  ‘Yes, but is it over? Did it stop? Do you think he’d have made the deal if he’d known what would happen to you?’

  ‘I don’t know. I think he was desperate.’

  ‘Exactly. And when you’re desperate, Olivia, it has you right where it wants you. And I can promise you one thing, speaking as one who’s had some experience with the dark – paying the piper is always going to be too high a price. So take me home, Olivia, and sit tight. I’ll be in touch.’

  FORTY-NINE

  Olivia was in the hallway outside her hotel room, just swiping the card through the lock, when she heard the soft voice call her name. She had been vaguely aware that the elevator had dinged, doors shuffling open and closed, aware of the footsteps behind her, someone in soggy shoes, saturated like hers by the constant downpour of rain.

  The voice was girlish, sounding just enough like Teddy to make her blood pound, even though she knew better.

  ‘Aunt Olivia?’

  Janet held a hand out, and Olivia took a step backward. Olivia felt ashamed even as she did it, she knew it was unfair, but she blamed her, blamed Chris’s little girl. Unfair and unkind, and she made herself smile and open the door to her hotel room wide and invite the girl in.

  Janet was trembling, perhaps a combination of cold, nerves, wet. Her jeans were soaked, the ragged bottoms streaked with mud, and her navy blue hoodie was plastered to her body like a second skin.

  ‘You’re soaking, hon,’ Olivia said. ‘Come on, peel out of that jacket, let me get you a towel. Why don’t you take those wet things off, you can borrow something of mine.’

  Janet pulled the hoodie back off her head, but would not take the jacket off. Her hair clung in sodden strands around her face. Her eyes were bruised looking, her face broken out, angry red in patches on her cheeks and skin. She clutched the towel Olivia gave her in bunched up fists.

  ‘Come on, Janet, sit down.’ Olivia pulled a chair from the wall.


  ‘I’ll get it wet.’

  ‘Don’t worry about that. How did you get here? Does your mom know where you are?’

  Janet settled on the edge of the seat cushion, hunching her shoulders together. ‘I walked some and took a bus. Mom thinks I’m doing a study date with a friend. I had to talk to you, but Mama wouldn’t let me come. Because of what happened to Teddy. Because you were so upset. I’m so sorry, Aunt Olivia.’

  ‘Thank you, honey. To tell you the truth, I don’t know which end is up anymore.’

  ‘That’s one reason I had to come, Aunt Olivia. I need you to really listen to what I have to say.’

  ‘Okay, but let’s get you out of those wet things first. Let me run you a hot bath, and you can cuddle up in this bathrobe, and if you’re hungry—’

  ‘Please, Aunt Olivia, don’t mom me. Please just listen to what I have to say.’

  Olivia sat back on the bed.

  Janet squeezed the towel in her fists and looked at the floor. ‘I’ve been praying a lot, Aunt Olivia, for Teddy, and trying to talk to Daddy in my dreams. I can’t know that he hears me, but I think he does.’

  Olivia felt her shoulders sag. She felt she should hug Janet, wet and muddy or not, do something to comfort her. But she didn’t. She just sat there on the edge of the bed, thinking about what Teddy would be like at that age, wondering if Teddy would be lucky enough to get to that age. Bad thoughts, but she could not keep them out of her head.

  ‘I came here to warn you, Aunt Olivia. Because I think it must be trying to talk to you, isn’t it, trying to get in your head?’

  ‘What’s trying to talk to me?’

  ‘You know what. Why won’t anybody tell the truth about this thing? Duncan Lee, Decan Ludde. Whatever you call him. The Piper. Don’t pretend you don’t know.’

  ‘I do know what you mean,’ Olivia said steadily. ‘But I don’t hear it in my head.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I’m sure,’ Olivia said. But was she?

  ‘Because I bet it talked to Uncle Hugh. And it talked to Daddy. And I know it talked to Teddy. And all of them are dead.’

  ‘Don’t say that. Teddy isn’t dead.’

  Janet folded her arms, and Olivia realized her niece was looking at her with pity. ‘It doesn’t play fair, Aunt Olivia. There’s not going to be any mercy for Teddy, haven’t you figured that out?’