by Jim Brown
“Let’s try to stay calm.” John spoke in a firm but edgy voice. He was successfully maintaining control, but Piper couldn’t help but notice how he kept clutching at his gun belt, snapping and unsnapping the security strap, fidgeting. “A lot of strange things have been going on around here –”
“That’s the understatement of the year,” Nathan spit.
“There is still no clear motive, but I think we have a thread of an idea . . .”
“Thread . . . thread . . . ,” Nathan screamed. “You’re talking about threads. Hell, it’s more like a noose – a hangman’s noose. No offense, John, but are you crazy? Your head is sitting over there in the refrigerator, and we’re talking about motives?”
“I don’t see where panic gets us anywhere.”
“Nothing gets us anywhere,” Nathan shouted, throwing up his hands. “We’re trapped, John. Cheevers is right. No matter how you try to spin it, we are still trapped. Trapped with God knows what.”
“I’ll tell you what it is,” said Coye, his eye wide and dilated. The air hung heavy with the smell of coffee and fear. “I think it’s voodoo!”
“Voodoo,” Jerry said. The deputy shook his head and laughed. If he was looking for supporters in his mockery, he found none. His smile faded.
Dean was silent. He sat with his head down.
Piper felt a rattlesnake of dread coil in her stomach. Something’s wrong with Dean.
“We’ve got a city to keep alive, people,” John said. “If we panic, then nobody stands a chance. You got that?”
John then turned to the Mayor. “Nathan, I know you’re worried about Ava, but we’re counting on you. We need you. Now more than ever. So tell me, what’s the mood like? How are folks responding?”
Nathan still wore the face of a man in shock. “People are pretty nervous. But most just think it’s a storm. I’ve encouraged as many businesses as possible to stay open.”
John nodded and turned to his deputies. “Any signs of our mysterious Elijah.”
“None,” said Jerry. “Phones are intermittent, but as best I can tell, his prints haven’t triggered any alarms with the NCIC. Other than that, I’ve got his picture posted in every business in town. Nothing.”
“Maybe we should post a picture of Whitey Dobbs.” Dean’s voice was little more than a whisper, but his words hushed the group.
“Dobbs?” John rubbed his chin with a callused hand.
I just saw that chin resting on the carpet, Piper thought before she could stop herself.
“Who is Whitey Dobbs?” Jerry asked for a second time that day.
“A boy we buried alive twenty-two years ago for a crime he didn’t commit,” Dean answered.
“M-m-mercy of God,” Coye stammered.
“Buried?” Jerry repeated, as if he had somehow lost the capacity to understand English.
“It was a prank.” John looked at Dean. “We thought he had raped my sister.”
“Judy?” Maggie asked. Then to Dean. “Your wife?”
Dean nodded.
Piper could feel venomous fangs of fear indenting the soft muscle of her heart.
“It can’t be Dobbs,” Nathan said. “Despite what I heard. He’s long dead. Got to be.”
“It’s Dobbs,” Dean said. His voice flat, emotionless. “I know. I just saw him.”
“What?”John asked incredulously. “When?”
“Less than an hour ago. He was at the school. John, he hasn’t aged a minute. Not a minute.”
“That’s impossible.”
“And you holding your own severed head isn’t?” Dean challenged. “It was him. It was Whitey Dobbs.”
“A look-alike,” John challenged.
“His voice was the same. That laugh.”
John’s face was blotched red – with anger or frustration, Piper wasn’t sure. “He left this.” Dean Truman held up a heart-shaped locket.
The room was quiet enough to hear John swallow. “Judy’s locket?”
Dean nodded. “It disappeared from the hospital the night she died.”
Coye whimpered softly.
“Bullshit!” John’s riposte slashed through the silent room like a cannonball. “Absolute, bullshit! If you saw Dobbs, then you saw a guy our age with plastic surgery or someone made up to look like him.”
“Not this good. No one could do plastic surgery this good.”
“No one could make a Polaroid blink, but they did,” Piper said, rising from her chair. “Near-science, isn’t that what you called it, Dean? Technology that’s here, just not common knowledge yet. If they can make a photograph wink, then I believe they can make a thirty-nine-year-old man look seventeen.”
John nodded, favoring Piper with the slightest whisper of a smile. “You said it yourself, Dean. Someone is trying to push your buttons. Push you over the edge. What better way than by making you think that Whitey Dobbs is back? I know it’s far-fetched, but it makes a hell of a lot more sense than the other option.”
John took a deep, bracing breath and grasped his friend’s shoulders. “Listen to me. I need you, Dean. I need your brain. They’re trying to make you think you’re crazy – and if you buy into it, then they’ve won. You hear me? They’ve won.”
“Who’s won?” Dean demanded. “Who the hell could do all this, would do all this just to get at me?”
“A rival technical company?” Piper asked.
“Then kill me. Don’t spend billions of dollars on some elaborate ruse. It’s Whitey Dobbs. He’s back, unchanged, and he certainly has motive.” His anger spent, Dean collapsed his shoulders like a bird folding its wings. He dropped into the nearest chair, head in his hands.
John clenched his jaw. In the dead silence of the room Piper imagined she could hear his teeth grinding.
“Don’t you get it?” Dean spoke through his hands, not bothering to look up. “I was wrong. My whole life is a sham. Everything I believe in is a joke.”
Piper took the seat beside him. Her hand found his shoulder. “That’s not true. I think you were right. And you are right.”
He moved a hand to see her face. “You? You see ghosts. I thought you would be loving this. I’ll tell you what Dobbs told me: ‘Science is to the universe what snow is to Alaska, just a covering.’ Then the bastard mumbled something about not missing a dinner date.” Dean made a waving motion with his hand. “It doesn’t matter.”
“She’s right, Dean,” John said. “You’re our best hope. I need you to examine that thing in the refrigerator, that head.”
“I can you tell you now. It’s real.”
“I don’t doubt that, but its not my head. Obviously. Maybe you can find signs of plastic surgery. Whoever made that poor bastard look like me is the same person making this other guy look like Dobbs.” John stopped. “Wait a second. What did this Dobbs look-alike say about dinner?”
Dean cast him a doubtful eye. “A dinner date. So?”
The sheriff checked his watch. “Jesus! Mason is having dinner with his daughter at the Timber Limb Lodge. Niles, Cheevers, you’re with me.”
The deputies were on their feet.
Dean stood. “You don’t think – ”
“I’m not taking any chances.”
“I’m going with you,” Dean said.
“No. You’re staying here and finding some answers.” He looked at Piper. “We need him. Get him back. And do it quick.”
30
It was twenty minutes from the sheriff’s department to the Timber Limb Lodge. John was determined to make it in ten. The heavy, studded tires of the Jeep Cherokee bit deeply into the snow-padded roadway. The lodge was to the north, uphill. Even under the best conditions, it was dangerous; with the accumulation of ice and snow it was downright deadly.
John didn’t care. He had seen his friends slaughtered seen, his department wrecked, a
nd held his own severed head. But what bothered him the most was that dull, flat look on Dean Truman’s face. The look of defeat. Without Dean, they were without hope.
John pressed the accelerator. Snow chips, revealed in the headlights, pulsed blue and white. Jerry sat beside him, his fingers gripping the dash hard enough to dimple the console and turn his fingertips white. He didn’t say a word.
The car shimmied; John reigned it in like a wagon master. He didn’t slow down.
John was a practical man on an impractical mission. Was there a connection between Mason having dinner with his daughter and the man Dean thought was Whitey Dobbs making a reference to dinner plans? John honestly didn’t know. But despite the insanity of the current situation, all of his instincts, all his years as a cop, screamed there was.
“And how is everything tonight?”
Mason Evans looked up to see a neatly dressed young man with thick, dark hair and a thin mustache.
“I am Klaus, the maitre d’,” he explained. “May I get you anything?” His voice was a smooth as a freshly polished floor. And just as slippery, Mason wagered.
Mason growled under his breath but apparently loudly enough for the ever-so-wonderful David Levin to take note and smile. He finds the maitre d’ as bogus as I do, Mason realized. Maybe there was hope for the kid after all.
“My, what a beautiful ring,” Klaus gushed. “May I?”
Tina giggled, just like she used to when she was five and Mason would pounce on her pretending to be the Great Tickle Monster.
She extended her hand. Klaus took it, holding her by the fingertips, closely inspecting the small pearl ring. Then, like a cheesy actor in a bad French film, he bent to kiss the back of her hand.
“For crying out loud,” Mason grunted, this time making no effort to mask his distaste.
Tina giggled, enraptured by the exoticism.
Click.
Flip.
That sound? He had heard it earlier. An unexpected shudder sprinted up his body.
A glint, something shiny in the waiter’s hand.
Shiny?
Klaus pressed his lips fully against the back of her hand.
Shiny, like metal. Mason’s mind raced – recalling the earlier sound . . . the sound of his nightmares.
His lips still against his Tina’s hand, the waiter cut his eyes to Mason, the corner of his mouth drawn back in a grin.
Shiny . . . click . . . nightmares . . .
“Tinaaaa . . .” Mason screamed, seeing the cherry wood handle.
The world went into slow motion.
Mason watched with crystal clarity – his daughter turning a puzzled face in his direction; the brute, lips still pressed to her skin, eyes still on Mason, beginning to shake with laughter as the blade slid out of the palm of his left hand, its smoothness catching the light, and in one motion . . .
Blood . . .
Tina’s eyes flared, too shocked to feel pain. Blood spewed from her hand like water from a fire hose. The finger completely severed.
Tina began to scream.
The bastard stood, acting as if nothing had happened at all . . . grinning . . . laughing. He held Tina’s bloody digit between his thumb and forefinger, then tipped Mason a salute with the severed finger.
David Levin was slow to start but fast on his feet. He was behind Klaus. He reached out, grabbing a handful of hair. A coarse, black wig came off in his hand, revealing hair as white as bleached bones.
“Dobbs,” Mason shouted, vaulting from his chair.
“Daddyyyy . . ., “Tina shrieked, holding the bloody geyser in disbelief.
Grabbing a shoulder, David spun the man around, then threw an uppercut that caught him just under the chin.
The white-haired man staggered back. David charged.
“No!” Mason shouted. The warning came too late, the knife too fast. Dobbs made a single swipe. Blood exploded from the young man’s neck. His hands reflexively went to the wound, worthless against the gushing tide.
Mason could hear the gurgled gasp of an open windpipe. David’s head bobbed precariously.
God Almighty, the knife had cut to the bone.
David Levin’s head fell back touching his spine, exposing a gaping hole. The boy crumpled to the floor, his life shooting out in buckets of crimson warmth.
He almost took his head off. . .
Whitey Dobbs laughed, the sound of a thousand ravens startled into flight.
The waiter took a deep draw on the cigarette, then blew a plume of smoke directly at the NO SMOKING SIGN. To hell with it, it was bad enough in the restaurant on a night like this, no way he was going out in that weather for his break.
“Smoking in the boys’ room,” he said to his reflection.
He was only working here to make enough money to go to school, and he was only going to school to get a good job, and he only wanted a good job to – well, to make enough money to pay for cigarettes. “So, there you go,” – he snapped his fingers at the figure in the mirror – “the circle of life.”
The bathroom door banged open.
The boss. The waiter shoved his cigarette down the drain. But the man who came in was not the boss. The man with stark white hair smiled, walked up to the mirror and began to write.
“Hey . . . hey . . . whatcha doing?” the waiter said. “You can’t do that.”
The stranger only smiled as he continued to smear his message in red. “Don’t worry,” he said, holding up his writing instrument – a severed finger. “It’s only blood.”
John burst into the Timber Limb Lodge, entering a world in chaos. Patrons were running and heaving and crying. It was a maelstrom of panic. And in the eye of the storm, Mason.
Mason was kneeling over his unconscious daughter, swaddling her hand in a blood- rich napkin. A young man, head bent backward at an impossible angle, lay next to them.
Blood was everywhere.
Mason saw John from across the room; his eyes begged for help.
“Call an ambulance,” John said to Jerry, then ran to his cousin’s side. “How is she?”
“Alive,”Mason sobbed. “Alive, for now. John, he cut off her finger – he sliced it off while I watched.”
“Levin? His neck. What the hell can do that?”
Mason Evans shook his head, as if not believing his own memory. “A knife, a cherry handled switchblade.”
Deep, deep in his inner soul a fire ignited, roaring with unprecedented intensity. A flame that could not be extinguished by logic, by discipline, even by the law. Sheriff John Evans felt the urge, hotter, brighter, more ardent than ever before. “Whitey Dobbs,” he cursed.
“He went in the men’s room.”
John nodded, unholstering his gun.
“He cut off her finger, John – he cut off her finger. Then the bastard took it with him.”
The blaze, the fire, the fury, roared with the ferocity of a star going nova.
The perpetrator was shot and killed while resisting arrest. That was how the police report would read. No matter what, someone was going to die tonight.
John kicked open the bathroom door, knocking it askew on it’s hinges. He entered, gun thrust forward in a two-handed grip. He swept the room, the sound of his entrance still reverberating off the tiled walls.
Empty. Except for a man huddled in the corner.
“Where’s the guy that came in here?”
The old man trembled with visible intensity as he extended a long, slim finger, and pointed to the mirror.
The message was written in blood – Tina’s blood. Her tiny finger left on the counter.
On the mirror the letters of the blood-written message had begun to run.
31
Piper watched Dean as he sat on the piano bench. He was swaying gently, humming some song she knew but couldn’t quite pla
ce. She joined him on the bench.
Their arms touched as, by reflex, Pipers fingers went to the keyboard. Five years of piano lessons and a good ear for music made the move natural. “I’ve been trying to identify the song you’re humming.”
He looked at her without seeing. Eyes as blank as a dead fish. No hope, no hope.
“Have I been humming?”
“Nonstop.”
“I’m sorry.”
She shrugged. “No biggie. I just can’t name it, that’s all.”
“Hmmm. Now that you mention it, neither can I.”
This surprised her. “It’s familiar though, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, seems like it’s been on the tip of my tongue all day.”
“Wait a second. Let’s see if this helps.” Using one finger, she pinged out the tune he had been humming.
His brow furrowed. “What is that?”
She repeated the notes, then paused, thought about it, and played it again, this time in full, using both hands. The song echoed in the meeting room like thunder in a barrel. Heads turned.
Disgusting, the others must be thinking, Playing the piano at a time like this.
Let ‘em think what they want, Piper decided.
“Play it again,” Dean said, standing up and looking over her shoulder. She did as he asked, then paused, letting the notes run around in her memory. What was that song? Like Dean, she felt it was there, just at the tip of her consciousness.
Dean stepped back, as if struck by a sudden bolt of lightning. For a moment, she thought he had been. Then she saw his eyes. His eyes, his eyes. They were alive. He looked at her and this time he saw her.
“I’ve got it.” Then something extraordinary happened. After more than two hours of acting like an extra in a remake of Night of the Living Dead, Dean spoke with animation. “It’s from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. A silly song – Judy and I used to love it. What is it called?”
Dean bit his lower lip in thought, then smacked them with satisfaction. “The Time Warp”.