by Jim Brown
“It was either that or a small tornado,” Piper said. “Anyone see a funnel cloud?”
Everyone shook their head. Piper continued. “According to folklore, in the early 1700s a strong, hot wind blew down half an acre of Douglas firs and set the ground on fire, wiping out the Native American tribe that had settled here.”
“Fire. It was a hot wind, almost scorching.” Jerry said.
“In the 1800s a settlement of pioneers were wiped out when a violent wind battered the valley into pulp.”
Piper waited till the rustle of nervous chatter died down, then continued. “In 1968 survivors reported a similar hot wind just before the elementary school erupted in flames.” Piper squinted in thought, then winced at the pain caused by pulling on the stitches.
“Whatever it was, it was blowing north to south,” John said.
“That’s right,” Piper’s eyes brightened. “I didn’t put it together until now, but they all did. In all the accounts of strange winds survivors describe it as blowing north to south.”
“Maybe it has something to do with the valley – you know, the terrain,” Jerry suggested. “Maybe our geographical layout generates this phenomenon.”
Someone coughed. The coffee machine, saved from the ruined break room gurgled contentedly.
“But what about the lightning? Lighting in a snowstorm?” asked Coye. “This happened just a little while ago – lit up the whole sky and lasted forever.”
“There have been similar accounts.” Piper said. “Reports of odd, sustained lighting strikes lasting for several seconds, by one account up to a minute. The last time it happened was the night my mother died.”
“But that’s impossible.”
“No, it’s not,” said John. “I’ve seen it, too.”
“I remember that night,” Nathan said. He looked at John. “That was the night we buried Whitey Dobbs.”
Maggie arched an eyebrow.
“That’s the second time I’ve heard that name,” Jerry said. “Who the hell is Whitey Dobbs?”
“You mean what the hell is Whitey Dobbs,” Nathan whispered, then fell silent, his mind retreating to the gray weightlessness of a medicated world.
“All I know is we’re trapped.” Coye repeated. “We got a serial killer, freaky weather, and Lord God only knows what else – and we can’t do nothing. Nothing.”
“That’s enough. We’re cops. There is a killer out there, and it’s our job to find him.”
“I hate to be a doomsayer,” said Jerry . “But we don’t have access to a crime lab, no way of examining the bodies. And no one has even mentioned the other stuff, like the glass storm that shredded Meredith Gamble – and what about that truck? Where the hell did it come from?”
John slammed his fist onto the table top. The sound of flesh hitting wood echoed like a gunshot.
A pall of silence returned.
When he was sure he had their attention, John began to speak. He was confident, self-assured. “You all know who Dr. Dean T. Truman is.” Heads nodded around the room. “If the fine folks at Time magazine are to be believed, Dean is one of the ten smartest men in the world. Even as we sit here squealing like a gaggle of frightened schoolgirls, Dean is up there at the college working in his lab, chasing down the answers to all your questions.”
He paused to study their faces. No one seemed to breathe. They desperately wanted to believe, needed to believe.
He looked at his second-in-command. “You’re right, Jerry. We don’t have a crime lab and we do have a lot of weird shit going on, but we also have something else. A genuine, honest-to-God genius. And if I were a betting man, I’d put Dean Truman’s brain against the devil himself.”
He gave them all assignments, to collect as much information as they could. Exact measurements – where the windstorm had begun, where it had ended; the distance the debris had traveled; a list of all the debris, like pictures on Maggie’s desk that seemed to have just vanished.
“Facts and figures, folks, facts and figures,” he said. Duties assigned, he sent them to work with orders to meet again in one hour.
With the copier and a mug shot, flyers were made bearing the picture of Elijah. John wanted the flyers plastered all over town.
While his orders were being carried out, John made his way to the school to check on Dean’s progress.
Piper was leaving the dayroom when she picked up one of the hastily made WANTED posters for the mysterious Elijah. It occurred to her that she had never seen him and so would not be able to recognize him if she did.
She looked at the photograph.
The memory came like wind over water.
That face? It looked somehow familiar.
A ripple, then a wave, building to a tsunami. Suddenly, she was there again, back to the night of the storm, back to the night her mother died. Standing over her fallen parent watching the very life drain from her, not understanding, not knowing what to do.
“Mommy? Mommy, what’s wrong?”
Her mother’s face flashed white from a spike of lighting and the heavens roared like a wounded beast. Mommy was lying on the floor looking out at the storm. Lying in a pool of her own blood.
With fingers awkward, stubby, and small, Piper reached out and touched her mother’s hair.
“Mommy hurt.”
“Piper. No, honey, go back to bed.” She gagged, choking on her own blood.
“Mommy, get up.”
“It’s all right, honey, go back to sleep. Mommy is just resting.”
“I’m scared.”
“Just a storm . . .” her mother said, struggling. “Don’t be afraid.”
“Not scared of the thorm,” Piper said, stepping between her fallen mother and the open door. “Scared of the bad thing.”
Piper turned to face her mother, a small trickle of blood beginning to run from her nose.
“Piper?”
Piper looked out the door. Lightning flashed, revealing a silhouette, a man standing in the doorway. A man? How could she have forgotten that?
“It’s okay, little girl. It’s okay,” said the man, his voice as soft as a snowfall.
Another flash, his face revealed. “It’s okay, you’ll be alright. I promise.” A face? A face she had never seen before and would never see again.
Piper looked down at the flyer in her hand. Until now.
The memory let go slowly, a python slackening its grip. Her mind snapped back to the present. My God, where had that come from? Her hands were trembling. She felt something on her face, she touched it. Blood. Her nose was bleeding.
Dean held the small, heart-shaped locket in the palm of his hand.
Judy’s locket.
He rubbed his thumb over the rose petal engravings, feeling the slight rise and fall of the metal. How long had he wanted to do this?
If I could just feel it again.
Then what? Everything would be all right? Wasn’t that what he had thought? As if Judy’s locket were a magic talisman that could somehow spirit away the pain.
And now –
Here it was, finally in his hands. But . . .
The grinning, jack-o’-lantern face of Whitey Dobbs flared in his mind.
Suddenly the locket felt heavy, hot, ruined – soiled by the touch of the impossible man, the ageless monster who made a mockery of Dean’s very life.
Maybe seeing me prompted the heart attack.
Whitey Dobbs’ words rang in his head like a perpetual Klaxon. All that searching and he could never find the locket. Now he knew why.
Whitey Dobbs had it.
But that was impossible. Impossible.
Hadn’t aged a bit, not a nanosecond.
Impossible.
She didn’t die alone.
Impossible.
Please, dear God, let it be impossible.
Running his finger along the edge of the locket, he found the locking mechanism. Then, using his thumbs, he found the seam and carefully opened the locket.
Inside on the right was a picture of Judy – sweet, wonderful Judy, exactly as he remembered her; on the left, where Judy had so lovingly placed his picture all those long, dead years ago, was a grinning, sneering image of Whitey Dobbs.
It means we’ll be together forever.
They gathered back at the conference room exactly one hour after they had left. Everyone was there except for John and Dean. Coye sat outside in a small, brown folding chair waiting for them.
Piper rubbed her hands together, as if trying to start a fire, and found her mind drifting back to the stranger, Elijah Bones. The more she thought about it, the clearer the memory became. The man she’d seen that night was tall – of course, when you’ re a child, everyone is tall, but she remembered other things: he wore blue jeans, muddy boots, and a long army-green coat with a black T-shirt, and a floppy cowboy hat sat low on his head.
The same thing clothes Elijah had been wearing when Jerry arrested him. How was such a thing possible? What did it mean?
Piper looked at the clock. John should have been back by now, Dean in tow. What was taking so long? Even though he was the last person likely to believe her, she desperately wanted to see Dean.
Where were they?
Coye knew there was a problem the minute the severed head rolled in the door like a bloodied bowling ball. For one thing, as the head tumbled, skidded, and thumped against the conference room door, it left a skittery tail of blood and neck guts on the tan carpet. Sheriff Evans didn’t like blood and neck guts on his carpet. For another thing, seeing the severed head was sure to make the deputy pass out, and Sheriff Evans didn’t like his passing out.
But he couldn’t help it, he thought, as the world faded to black.
The thump at the door was firm and solid.
Nathan Perkins, a little more clear-eyed than before, was the closest to the door. He answered what he took to be an awkward knock. He expected to see the vacant face of Coye Cheevers announcing that the sheriff was back with Dean. Instead he saw – an empty hall?
And at his feet –
A human head!
Nathan began to scream, an involuntary, uncontrollable sound. A sound that brought everyone to the door where they, too, saw the head!
Nathan was no longer screaming alone.
“Touch nothing,” Jerry snapped, his voice shrill and stressed as he pulled and cocked his service revolver in one easy motion. He stepped over the head, calling for his colleague.
“Cheevers,” he repeated, inching into the hallway. There in the lobby, in a spill of white light, he saw Coye sprawled on the floor. Jerry’s professional eye noted he was breathing. “Piper, check Cheevers. I’m going outside.”
The night air struck him with a chilly blow. An October bite pinched his nose with every breath. The street was quiet, as still as the air. Snow lit on his head, shoulders, face, and hands.
A truck bearing the Westcroft College logo slid to an awkward stop, its motor still running. The door opened. Jerry aimed his gun in a double-handed professional grip. Dean stepped out into the snow.
“Dr. Truman?” Jerry said.
The professor looked at the weapon, then raised his hands. Jerry lowered his gun. “Thank God you’re here. Something’s happened. Where’s the Sheriff?”
Dean dropped his hands and hunched his shoulders. “The sheriff? I thought he was here, with you?”
A new concern clawed at the back of Jerry’s mind. “No. He left to pick you up over an hour ago.”
“I haven’t seen him.”
A new scream cleaved the air. It came from inside. Jerry ran back into the station, vaguely aware of Dean calling behind him, the sound of the truck door closing as the professor no doubt went to shut off the engine.
He didn’t wait. Instead he ran back to the conference room. In the doorway Piper stood shaking and screaming. At her feet lay the human head. It had been rolled over, the face revealed.
Jerry Niles found himself staring at the dead white face of John Evans.
29
Mason was pleased that the Timber Limb Lodge was open and doing a brisk business despite the weather. If he had to get to know his daughter’s new boyfriend, he preferred to do it in a place that served beer. David Levin put his arm around Tina’s shoulder. She melted into his embrace.
Mason hated him. But nodded and forced a grin. This was supposed to be a meeting to make amends, and after what John had told him, it should have been a flat-out celebration.
The mess was over.
The stranger who had been hanging around town turned out to be an armed lunatic and thankfully was now in custody. As for the Polaroid, John had called to say it was just a trick, no hallucination; Dean had figured it out. And that meant. Mason was not going crazy.
But why Whitey Dobbs? Who knew to push that particular button? No, It didn’t matter. It was over. Leave the mystery to John and Dean. With the pass closed and now the bridge out, it looked like Mason would be taking some unexpected vacation.
He looked around the Timber Limb Lodge. The restaurant was half-full despite the weather. Black Valley residents were a tough breed. They took pride in thumbing their nose at nature. He liked that.
“Isn’t he the greatest, Daddy?” Tina cooed, her arms intertwined with the right arm of her young boyfriend.
Mason felt a prick of jealousy. He swallowed the pain and lied. “The greatest, dear, the greatest.”
The glorious David Levin grinned. He was a good-looking kid, well dressed, well spoken. It turned out he was a business major with a real future. Good for him. But still, Tina was his little girl, and trick or no trick, his brush with losing her had only accentuated that feeling.
Tina held her hand out, inspecting the pearl ring David had presented to her just before dinner. A ring? Jewelry was a personal gift. How long before he gave her one with a diamond? How long before Mason lost his baby girl to this jerk?.
Then he reminded himself: At least he’s not Whitey Dobbs.
Dean came running down the hall toward them. Piper looked at him, trying to focus through tear-veiled eyes. “Oh, God, Dean, it’s so horrible.” She threw herself into his arms. “Thank God you’re alive.”
The stunned professor stood immobile for a moment, then returned the hug. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
“We thought you were dead, too,” Nathan repeated. He was sitting in a folding chair, a cold washcloth to his face.
Reluctantly, Piper released her grip, took a step back, and studied Dean’s face. Relief was quickly replaced with concern. He didn’t look right. “Dean? What’s wrong?”
His face was ashen, his eyes anxious.
Something has happened to him, Piper realized. Something very, very bad.
“It’s John,” Jerry said. Something had been placed on the corner of the desk and covered with a white linen towel. It was slightly oval.
“Jerry?” Dean asked.
“It’s the sheriff. He killed him.” The deputy took a breath and removed the towel. “He’s been decapitated, Dr. Truman.”
Dean could only blink and stare – looking at the severed head of his oldest, dearest friend.
“John?” he said.
As the county coroner, he had seen enough to know that this was real, no matter how hard his mind fought against it. The mouth was closed, jaw locked, but the eyes, cloudy as if preserved in a protective covering of plastic, were open and wide.
“John,” Dean whispered.
“What?” asked a deep baritone voice.
They turned as one; the air suddenly gushed from the room, consumed by the group’s simultaneous gasp. Jerry, Dean, Maggie, Coye, Nathan, and Piper all stared, looking in disbelief at
the front entrance.
Sheriff John Evans stood in the doorway, hale and hardy, head attached.
Jerry bumped the desk.
The severed head tumbled to the floor, hitting with the thud of a ripe cantaloupe, and rolled across the carpet, coming to rest at the sheriff’s size-fourteen boots. With nerves forged from iron and near superhuman emotional detachment, John reached down, grabbed a fistful of steel-gray and black hair, and lifted the head. Blood and fluids dripped in silent plunks from the neck wound. John held the head up to eye level and stared unblinkingly into to his own face.
“Damn,” was all he said.
A moan like a dying note on an oboe escaped as Deputy Coye Cheevers passed out again.
Tina talked, about school, about her sorority, but mostly about David. Wonderful, magical, walk on water David. They had only known each other for a short period of time, and already they were slipping away for a romantic tryst on the lake. Mason decided he would call Tina’s mother as soon as he returned to Portland. Maybe she could help put the skids on this way too serious, way too early relationship.
Tina was telling some never-ending story about her history professor, who had a fondness for dressing in period clothes, and David the Great was grinning, when Mason heard it.
Click.
Flip.
It was a small sound, easily lost beneath the general clutter of utensils and conversation. Yet, a sound Mason found obscurely familiar. He didn’t know what, but he knew where. It was a sound he heard often. . . . in his nightmares.
Once again they gathered in the cluttered conference room – bleary eyed and shell shocked. Piper crossed her arms, hugging herself, wondering if she would ever be warm again.
John explained how he had gotten side tracked by a nasty traffic accident, then returned to the station when he didn’t find Dean at the school.
“I don’t like this. No sir, not one bit.” Nathan said. “This is not right. That thing, that maniac that attacked my Ava – it isn’t human.”