Black Valley

by Jim Brown

  “I’ll have my deputies check the room for fiber evidence.” John said.

  “Thread?” Piper said again..

  “Everything can be explained by science,” Dean said. His oft-used refrain.

  “What about the hand?” Piper challenged.

  Her color had returned. She really was a remarkable woman. “Applied after Clyde was choked. Still -” A thought hung just out of reach.

  “Whose hand is it?” John interrupted. “And if the wound is as fresh as it appears – ”

  “Then the victim would have to be nearby.”

  Squawlk. John’s radio bleated. “Base to one-oh-one, base to one-oh-one – Sheriff, you there?”

  John keyed the mike. “Go ahead, Maggie.”

  “Better get over to Hawkins Trail.” Static swallowed the next two words, but Dean could make out the final phrase, “. . . a ten thirty-two.”

  As county coroner, he knew what a 10-32 meant. “A body,” he moaned.

  John’s already stern face became granite. “I think we just found the victim.”

  9

  The sun was gone, as were the stars and moon. In the moment between shutting off the car and turning on the flashlight, Dean Truman had the unnerving sense that the world had disappeared, as if God had snatched it away.

  John’s police-issued flashlight cast a cone of yellow-ivory light. “Sure you want to do this?” John asked.

  “Yeah, I’m sure,” Dean replied as they headed up the trail. “This close to the school, it may be someone I know. Besides, I’m the county coroner. I have to.”

  The path, worn into the side of the butte by continual use, circled Hawkins Hill at a slight, steady incline before dropping back sharply and depositing the traveler to the beginning of the trail. In the summer, it was frequented by many serious joggers. Even in the fall, when all the leaves were gone, Dean could occasionally see bobbing forms in bright Lycra huffing their way around the circumference. Not so much in the winter. And this early cold spell had already shooed away most visitors.

  They turned the bend and spied an island of harsh, blue-white light emanating from a pair of powerful halogen lamps. The lamps, on sturdy metal stands, operating on independent power supplies, were staged on opposite sides of the path.

  Dean had the discombobulating sensation of watching a movie: an archeological dig revealing ancient secrets newly discovered, or of clandestine government agents stealing away the remains of some extraterrestrial spacecraft that had smashed into the side of the hill.

  Spacecraft? Where had that come from? Dean shook his head, attempting to slough off his uneasiness. What was wrong with him? He was a scientist. Spooky sensations and flinching at bumps in the night were the purview of the uneducated. His was a trained mind, trained almost from birth to seek, examine, and comprehend.

  Yet the sense of foreboding remained.

  Something crunched beneath their feet. John shone the light on the ground. The earth glittered.

  Glass?

  Dean’s steps faltered. His legs seemed tentative. The sheriff continued. Dean scrambled to keep up. He recognized John’s deputies, Jerry Niles and Coye Cheevers. The latter shifted his weight from foot to foot, shoulders hunched, wringing his hands, nervous as a death-row inmate. Cheevers was not a strong man. His position with the sheriff’s department was the only solid evidence that big, bad Sheriff John Evans had a tender, albeit small, heart at his center. The deputy wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then stepped into the shadows.

  Dean could hear him retching – the sound of dry heaves, of a man who had already purged.

  The path, and much of the surrounding ground, sparkled as resplendent light was caught, refracted, and splintered into a thousand pieces. And in the center? Dean forced himself to look and immediately understood his uneasiness.

  A thing. A thing. That’s what it was. The pretense of humanity was minimal, its similarity to a person like that of a shadow to its caster. Dean recognized dark hair, flashes of pink flesh. A mound of shredded, slashed fabric and flesh – white, blue, black, and red. Lots of red. A crimson, dirty red. The color of blood stained with sin and secrets.

  Subconsciously he must have recognized the fabric and, by extrapolation, the victim. Meredith Gamble. She was on the city council. He had seen her just yesterday. She was a jogger. Hard-core. She would be on the trail when all others had called it quits for the season.

  Dean stopped just outside the cone of light. John continued on, talking to his crew, the ground crunching beneath his feet.

  “Meredith Gamble.” Dean realized he must have said the name out loud. Conversation stopped. The sheriff and his deputy looked back at him.

  “You sure?” John asked, though the words were more statement than question. John Evans had always placed his highest confidence in Dean. Even before the awards and accolades, it was John, more than anybody, who treated Dean with professional respect.

  “I can’t be sure without a closer look, but the clothes . . .” He stepped into the light. The ground crunched beneath him. He squatted. Thousands and thousands of shards of glass – some no larger than a BB, others the size of a fist, at least four pieces the length and shape of a license plate.

  Glass?

  The thing on the ground, the thing he believed to be Meredith Gamble, had been shredded and slashed, cut by thousands of shards of jagged glass, hundreds of which protruded from her body like bloodstained quills. There were entrance and exit wounds where thousands of splinters had slashed completely through the body, leaving ragged holes in cloth and skin.

  “What is this, sheriff? What happened?” Deputy Jerry Niles asked his superior. He was a young man with serious, hard eyes.

  But the Sheriff had no ready answer. Though he maintained his trademark expression of stoic control, his jawline revealed a silent clenching and unclenching of teeth, the only hint of frayed nerves.

  “Nothing around for thousands of yards,” Jerry continued. “Closest building is the school. Cheevers checked and said there was no broken glass, except for one window pane.”

  John looked at Dean, both realizing it was his window, shattered by a brick that very afternoon. But that one pane could not account for all the glass on the ground, the bushes, and the flesh of Meredith Gamble.

  How had it gotten here? How could it have been hurled with such force?

  “An airplane?” John asked. “Could it have come from an aircraft?”

  “A plane,” Dean warmed to the idea. “Possibly. That would certainly explain the lack of obvious origin, as well as apparent velocity.”

  “I can check with the FAA,” Jerry said.

  Dean stepped closer, squatting near the body. He was greeted with the dreadful smell of raw flesh and blood. Meredith. He fought his gag reflex by summoning the scientist. He studied the body with a practiced detachment. “Whatever the origin, it hit her body with tremendous force.”

  Dean chewed on a new thought. “Point of impact was face-on.” Dean looked up and out into the darkness, out where he knew the trail continued to climb.

  “She would have had to be lying on the ground to be hit in the face from falling debris.” He stood and took several steps back, then squatted again. “Can I see your flashlight?”

  John tossed him the large plastic instrument. Using the pen he had used earlier to examine the hand, Dean turned over several shards of glass. He knew he was breaking regulations, contaminating a crime scene, and dozens of other rules, but John made no effort to stop him.

  “John, Jerry, you may want to bag this,” he said, using lingo garnered from movies and novels. He pointed to a row of glass. “The shards show remnants of blood and cloth like they passed through the body.”

  “Through?” Jerry questioned. “That’s five feet away. Then – ”

  “Then she would have had to be standing, meaning t
he glass came at her head-on – meaning it couldn’t have fallen from a plane.”

  “Then from where?”

  The night hung in silence.

  “There’s another problem,” John said. “She’s still got both her hands.”

  Somewhere in the dark Deputy Cheevers retched again.

  His passkey gave him entrance into the building. He flicked a switch; a single row of lights winked to life, shoving shadows to one side. He used a different key to unlock his classroom. Inside, Dean Truman paused before turning on the lights. Out his window he could just make out the glow from the large police lights.

  The image of Meredith Gamble flashed involuntarily in his mind. Hacked to death by what? Where had all that glass come from? How had it been delivered with such force?

  He flipped three switches. Multiple rows of light hummed to life. The classroom woke.

  Dr. Dean Truman was a scientist. Logic was his constant companion. A man accustomed to deciphering the undecipherable. His curiosity and determination had provided the propulsion that drove his career. There was always an answer – always. It was that kind of determination that had won him the Nobel Prize.

  Dean retrieved his briefcase from the only closet in the room. A piece of cardboard had been taped over the shattered pane. He checked to make sure all the windows were locked, gave the room a final once-over, turned out the lights, and left, securing the door behind him.

  He was fumbling with his keys, searching for the building key in the subtle shine of the single row of lights, when he heard a sound.

  A strange, yet vaguely familiar sound: scratching, squealing.

  He stopped, holding the keys quietly. The hair on the back of his neck rose like a porcupine’s quills.

  Scratch, scratch, scratch . . .

  His arms and legs tingled with the prick of a thousand pins.

  Scratch, scratch, scratch . . .

  He listened, trying to locate the point the origin. Familiar and - coming from the classroom? Dean turned and stared at the freshly locked door, his eyes wide with incredulity.

  Inside?

  Scratch, scratch . . .

  The sound stopped. His heart drummed in his ears. The hum of the lights suddenly seemed ominous, dastardly, like the whine of a thousand blood-lusting insects moving through the rafters.

  Insects?

  Scratch . . .

  His hand moved on its own, smooth and seamlessly from hundreds of mornings of practice, his fingers dexterously selecting and inserting the proper key. Hand on the knob, turning. He pushed the door open but remained in the archway, peering from the semilit hallway into the total darkness of his classroom.

  Nothing moved. No sound. Even the air seemed paused.

  It was the scientist who stepped forward, the scientist who noted the absurdity of his situation. A grown man shivering in the hall because of -- what? A noise? A sound? An unidentified scraping from an empty room?

  “Ridiculous,” he said aloud to underscore his personal disgust. But even this irrational fear could be explained by rational thought. Just minutes earlier he had been standing inches from the shredded corpse of a woman – a friend. His nerves were raw, his emotions exposed. The sparks of irrationality were completely and utterly understandable but – to a scientist, not acceptable.

  And he was a scientist.

  With that, Dean’s hand went to the wall, fingers flicking the three switches simultaneously. Once more the fluorescence revealed – nothing.

  An empty room.

  The same room he had left just moments before. And the sound? The scratching? Rats, perhaps. Although he had seen none of the telltale signs, no chewed papers or tiny, hard, black rat turds, still it was possible – hell, even likely. It was an old school.

  Only – what?

  It hadn’t sounded like rats. The noise had been faint and – familiar.

  His mind finally settled on a definition. The blackboard. The scratching sound of chalk – not chalk, something –on a blackboard.

  He turned to confront the board.

  Instantly his mouth was dry, his throat clouted with disbelief.

  He stared and blinked and stared some more.

  Cut into the milky blackness of the board, where just seconds before there had been nothing more than the wisp of chalk dust, were five simple words.

  Impossible words.

  10

  Piper Blackmoore woke with a jolt. She was sweating. Her pajamas stuck to her skin. Yet she was shivering – and panting like a runner. A mild electric current licked her body, causing the fine hairs on her arms and neck to stand on end. She clicked on the light, chasing away the shadows. Her extremities tingled, and for a moment, the heartbeat of a hummingbird, she was afraid she wasn’t there, sure that if she looked at her hands, she would see - nothing.

  Nothing.

  The faint electric hum of the clock radio lured her back to reality. The time was 12:11 A.M. Her sleep had been erratic, though she could not pinpoint why. Thunder? She remembered hearing thunder deep in the night. Thunder in October?

  Climbing out of bed, she parted the tieback curtains. A dirty gray, diffused light oozed in through rain-starred windows. Outside, the earth was being scrubbed by a hard, pounding rain. Droplets the size of a man’s thumb whacked the ground, sending little pellets of dirt and water several inches into the air. A dome of bulky, foreboding clouds lurched over the crest of Hawkins Hill.

  The large, open-faced thermometer mounted on the back porch put the temperature at thirty-four degrees. Almost freezing. Too cold for thunder. Down twenty degrees from last night.

  Cold.

  Trembling, Piper hugged herself. What was it that student had said in the cafeteria line? Someone walked over your grave?

  She went to the bathroom, turned the shower on full, and let the room fill with steam. She pealed off her sweat-soaked pajamas and gave herself to the hot, vigorous embrace of the shower.

  Water pounded her skin, helping to allay the uneasiness. But not entirely. It couldn’t wash away what stirred beneath the epidermis. Piper Blackmoore was accustomed to strange feelings -- they were old friends. Even the scary ones. She couldn’t remember a time in her life when she didn’t feel things others could not.

  But this was different.

  She laid her head deep into the spray, letting the warm, pulsating water knead her scalp. Different?

  With her heart rhythm under control, her breathing measured, she could examine the sensation from a better perspective. Scientifically, Dr. Truman would say. Dean. She laughed, warmed by the sound of her own voice as much as by the water. He was a singularly fascinating and frustrating man. As focused as a laser, as precise as a calculator, yet, at the same time, it wasn’t beyond him to be frivolous, to occasionally poke his head up from the abstract world of physics and notice the scent of a flower, an old decorative broach, or even a new pair of Nikes she had bought on an indulgent whim because she liked the pretty neon-green, swoosh.

  Piper let the thought warm her further.

  Dean Truman. They were polar opposites. He the scientist, she the – what was she? Open-minded? Aware? Able to accept and believe things that couldn’t be qualified and measured. Yet, they enjoyed a rich relationship. She was drawn to him despite the thirteen-year age difference.

  She shut off the shower and dried herself with a large, fluffy towel. She vigorously raked her fingers through her short black hair and shook her head. Sleep was no longer an option.

  She padded across the hardwood floor to her closet. She dressed in jeans, a white blouse, and a rust and white Westcroft College jersey.

  In the kitchen she fixed herself a poached egg and toast and began heating a kettle of water for coffee. She had lived in the old farmhouse all her life. She had been born here; her mother had died here. It was a house of barbed memories.
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  Somebody walked over your grave.

  When the tea kettle whistled, she jumped.

  The uneasiness that had seized her in her sleep still clung to her waking mind. She brushed the hair back from her face and sipped her instant coffee from a Mickey Mouse-embossed mug.

  “You’re being foolish,” she chided herself. “Like a spooky old woman.”

  The room answered with silence. Thunder. In her mind she remembered that much. The roiling thunder. Only there wasn’t any thunder. Not in October. Not today, with the temperatures plunging toward freezing.

  A jolt.

  At first she thought she stepped on an electrical wire. A surging, sense-numbing jolt. Gooseflesh rose on her arms.

  Something was happening.

  She had to go.

  Where?

  She wasn’t sure, but she would know when she got there.

  Dean Truman jerked.

  Nothing.

  He pulled harder – putting his back into it, as his dad used to say. The wooden board remained defiant, intact. Hammered into place more than twenty-one years ago, it still prevailed, barring admittance to the small, sublevel basement; there was no other way in.

  It hadn’t come from here. No, not from here.

  His hands hurt. The imprint of the boards left deep crevices in the skin. He brushed his palms together, then pushed the bookcase back in place, once more hiding the barred entrance from view. He went to the kitchen and warmed his hands under a stream of hot water. The skin slowly reverted to normal. Would that his mind were so easily changed. But fear and confusion clung to him like the odor of the dead.

  God, what a morbid thought. Where the hell had that come from?

  From tonight, his mind answered. A slaughtered woman, a severed hand. More than adequate reasons for jittery nerves, only that wasn’t the force that drove him. That wasn’t what had his mind spinning at an unprecedented speed.

  How’s it hanging, Jimmy Dean?

  Dean opened three cabinets, searching until he found what he wanted – what he needed. The bottle of Canadian Mist whiskey had been a gift the Christmas before. He was not a drinker by nature, so the bottle had remained unopened. He broke the seal, poured two fingers’ full into a juice glass, added twice that amount of Diet Coke, then drank the concoction in one turn.