by Noel Hynd
Brooks remained silent, glanced to the ceiling and waited for more.
More arrived quickly.
“Ever see Hold That Ghost! with Abbott and Costello?” Agannis asked with exaggerated calmness. But his eyes were alive. Brooks sensed trouble.
“No, sir.”
“Well, maybe you should! It would be a whole lot better use of your time than this!”
“Ah, come on, Lieu—”
“Nah, you come on! I’ve never heard such bull in my life!” he said. “Women in white. Spirits. Cabinets falling over. Dark forms dispersing before your eyes! Judas Priest, Timmy!”
“There’s something strange in that place, Lieutenant.”
“Timmy, what did this Hollywood broad do to you? You’ve lost your brains.”
“I’m telling you, I saw something myself. A black…”
“Ah, nonsense!” Agannis snorted again. He rolled his eyes in dismay. His voice rang with such urgency that Boomer was jolted awake from some serious dozing. The dog lifted his head, gazed mournfully at his master, and wagged his tail, thumping it against the office wall as he wagged.
“Before I’d believe any crap like that,” Agannis said, “I’d have to see it for myself.”
Brooks grinned. “All right,” he said. “I’m on my way over to Cort Street right now. So here’s your chance.”
“Aah, Timmy…” Agannis said in disgust.
Agannis sank back in his chair, much of his weight upon the armrests. He looked at his watch and he looked at his detective. “What is it with you, Timmy? You think I’m as nutty as you are?”
“In the final analysis,” Brooks said slowly. “Yes. Maybe.” He motioned to the parking lot. “Whose car? Yours or mine?”
The lieutenant stared at his younger peer for several seconds. Then at length, “Mine,” Agannis said. “And Boomer comes, too.”
The retriever, hearing the word “car,” knew enough to get to his feet. The dog shuffled sleepily after the two policemen as they walked outdoors to the parking lot. The sun was bright. Brooks pushed a pair of sunglasses onto his face. Lieutenant Agannis owned a Ford Taurus wagon which was always parked in the same reserved spot on Hicks Street.
That bedeviling voice returned. It spoke to Brooks again.
And what do you think you’ll find, my fine moronic friend?
The voice was impish and shrill.
“Knock it off,” Brooks mumbled very softy.
Agannis cast him a glance as they stopped at his car. Then the lieutenant unlocked the vehicle. He opened the left rear door first, allowing Boomer to settle into the back seat. Then the two police officers slipped into the front.
“Just tell me one thing,” Agannis said as Brooks buckled himself into his seat on the shotgun side. Agannis, the Marlboro Man, eschewed the belts.
“What’s that?”
“You’re always mumbling to yourself these days,” Agannis said as the car’s engine turned over. “Who in hell do you think you’re talking to?”
“No one,” Brooks answered. He was surprised that Agannis had heard him, much less noticed a pattern of behavior. To Brooks it wasn’t even that obvious. It caused him to wonder how long he had been hearing that voice. He couldn’t even remember.
He’s right. I’m in hell. The voice laughed, mocked.
Brooks cringed.
The car started to move.
“No one, huh? Yourself, you mean?” Agannis asked. The lieutenant still looked displeased overall by the tide of events.
“Yeah. Myself.”
Liar! The voice screamed, mocking him. Liar! Liar! Liar!
“Myself,” Brooks repeated. “Sure sign of madness, isn’t it? Talking to oneself?”
Agannis didn’t answer. Instead, he shot Brooks an odd look as they pulled out into traffic. And Boomer punctuated the occasion with a gigantic but dismal yawn.
Chapter Thirty-nine
The key was under the mossy rock in the garden, just as Annette had promised. Brooks found it easily and unlocked the house at 17 Cort Street by the back door. He walked in first. Lieutenant Agannis followed. Boomer sat down stubbornly on the flagstones behind the house. Agannis slapped his thigh and motioned that the retriever could trail along. But the dog stretched out in the sunlight and chose not to follow.
“Just tell me this?” Agannis asked, entering the house behind Brooks. “What are we expecting to find?”
“Don’t know,” said Brooks. He felt his heart pump a little harder as he stood in the dining room. “Never know in this place.”
Agannis looked at him skeptically again. But the lieutenant’s doubts were tempered now that he was actually in the afflicted house. Jokes and skepticism did not come as easily, at least not immediately.
But there seemed nothing amiss. Someone—Annette presumably—had cut a bouquet of fresh flowers and put them in vases in the living and dining rooms. She had also left some windows open, just enough to bring a cooling breeze through the house. The breeze mingled with the scent of the flowers and gave the downstairs of 17 Cort Street a fresh, pure air.
“Want to look around together?” Brooks asked. “Or do we split up?”
“We’ll stay together, Timmy,” Lieutenant Agannis said. “That way if I see someone marching around with a sheet over his head, I’ll know it’s not you.”
“Very funny,” Brooks said. He motioned to the steps. “Let’s go upstairs first. We’ll work our way to the basement.”
“What are we looking for, anyway?” Lieutenant Agannis asked. “Let me know in case I see it, will ya?”
“If you see something, you’ll know,” said Brooks. “Beyond that, it’s more of a sense. A feel. I don’t know either but I wanted a look around.”
Lieutenant Agannis shot Brooks another strange look, then followed. They walked through the first floor, room by room. Then they went upstairs together and looked in each room. Brooks led. He felt nothing extra anywhere in the house. He had no special sense of anything. No intuition. He wished again that George Osaro could have accompanied them.
They came to the steps to the attic. Brooks looked up the staircase to the door that was closed at their summit. He hoped that Annette had remembered to leave it unlocked.
“This is the attic,” Brooks said. “This is where the dummy got its head torn off.”
Agannis grimaced. “I know in what part of a house an attic is located, Timmy,” he said. “And I know a dummy when I see one, too. Make that, a couple of dummies. You and me today, for example.”
Brooks led his commanding officer up the steps. His hand paused for a moment on the doorknob at the top of the stairs. Brooks looked for the padlock. He found it. Annette had left it undone.
Brooks drew a breath, unlatched the attic door and pushed it. For a moment, Brooks’ heart kicked because he could have sworn he felt some resistance to the other side, the type one feels when another hand is on the other side of a doorknob. But then the door gave way. It moved with a groan at its hinges, but opened easily.
Moments later the two policemen stood in the attic of 17 Cort Street, Brooks more wary than his commander. The chamber was warm, stuffy and stale. Brooks glanced to the windows and saw that Annette had indeed left them partially open. She had bought a small set of screens, in fact, and had positioned them so that air could flow through the room.
“So this is it?” Lieutenant Agannis asked.
Brooks nodded.
The two men poked around for several minutes. Again, they felt nothing. They saw nothing. The room was much as Brooks had seen it the last time, the day he last saw the body of the ventriloquist’s dummy, its arm hanging limp, lying beneath a sheet. Since then, Annette had apparently shipped it to her puppet maker in California.
“Pretty scary,” Lieutenant Agannis said flatly. Clearly, it wasn’t.
Brooks lingered for a moment, almost wishing the distant voice, the one he heard within his mind, would beckon him again and give him some sort of clue.
But that voice,
he had already learned, knew how to tease and torment. He knew it would only come when it was unwelcome or wished to mock him. Or when it wanted something. “I’m getting bored, Timmy,” Lieutenant Agannis said.
“All right,” Brooks said. “We can go back downstairs.”
They closed the attic door behind them. They walked down the steps. It was when they arrived on the landing of the second floor that Brooks heard something.
Movement. A thump. A human voice. He stopped short.
“Wha…?” Agannis began to ask.
Brooks’ finger rose to his lips. He shushed his lieutenant, indicating that they should fall silent. They both heard the sounds. A voice murmuring low. A few more thumps. The sound of furniture moving.
Brooks whispered.
“It’s downstairs,” he said. And it was.
It was in the area where the china cabinet had flown off the living room wall. Something was there. As real and demonstrable as the sun in God’s sky.
Brooks broke a slight sweat. For the first time, a look of concern crossed Agannis’ face. Brooks motioned that the lieutenant should follow.
They moved through the landing of the second floor and went to the stairway that led downstairs. In the living room below them, the sounds continued.
Brooks reached the top of the stairs first, sweat building within his clothing. He took one step onto the top stair, let his foot followed softly and continued.
The voice in the living room was almost discernible now.
There continued also the unmistakable sound of furniture moving. Brooks crept to the bottom step. Agannis remained behind his detective.
Brooks reached the first floor. From where he stood he could see out the screen door at the rear of the house. Boomer lay motionless on the flagstone path, stomach up, neck bent. It suddenly occurred to Brooks that the dog should have barked. Was Boomer dead? The dog didn’t move.
Then there was the sound of music in the living room. Music from a radio. Brooks looked at Agannis, who was directly behind him. Lieutenant Agannis gave a nod.
Instinctively, Brooks placed a hand on his weapon. He advanced two steps and came to the door frame of the living room.
The figure of a man moved among the scattered furniture. The man’s head came up with a start and turned when Brooks drew within sight.
Brooks stared. Lieutenant Agannis stared from behind him. “Timmy? Lieutenant Agannis? What are you doing here?”
Brooks felt a tremendous wall of tension collapse within him as he and his lieutenant gazed upon the slightly overweight face and figure of Emmet Hughes, the repairman whom Annette had hired to mend her living room wall.
“Ah, great…” Lieutenant Agannis said.
“What’s the matter?” asked Hughes, ruddy-cheeked and amiable. “Hey, Miss Carlson said I could be in here today. I made this appointment last week. So I came in and went to work. Is that okay?”
On the floor, Hughes’ boom box, his constant working companion, played rock from a Boston station. Hughes reached to it and turned down the volume.
Brooks moved his hand from his firearm. His shirt clung to the wetness of his ribs.
“Yeah, it’s fine,” Brooks said. “Didn’t expect you, that’s all, Emmet.”
“Isn’t she home?” Hughes asked. “No.”
Hughes was surprised. “Oh. Well, I saw Boomer out there,” Emmet Hughes laughed, pushing a toolbox to one side. “I knew you were here, Lieutenant. Figured Miss Carlson had to be here somewhere, too. Didn’t know about Timmy, though.”
He looked at the two cops for several extra seconds, doubt crossing his mind for the first time. “Nothing wrong is there?” “No,” Agannis said.
“Miss Carlson? She’s okay?”
“She went to New York on personal business,” Brooks said.
“She’s fine. More than fine.”
Hughes looked relieved.
“Oh. Well, that’s good,” he said. “Real good. She’s a nice lady, you know. Not stuck-up like a lot of them movie people must be.”
“Very true, Emmet,” Brooks said.
Reflexively, Lieutenant Agannis found his cigarette pack. He drew a smoke and lit it. As Agannis took a long carcinogenic drag, Emmet Hughes moved a chair away from the damaged wall. He also picked up the checkerboard table—the most fragile piece in the room—and moved it to safety near a front window.
“Wow,” Hughes finally said, looking for the first time at the full scope of the damage to the wall. The holes were so big that he could practically put his head in them.
“Can you believe this? Something hit through here like an express train,” he said.
“It just fell over one night,” Brooks said.
Hughes looked at him with a straight expression for a moment. Then he winked. “Yeah. And I’m the third Obama daughter.”
“No. Really it did.”
“Don’t jerk my chain, Timmy,” Hughes said with no contention at all. “These here moorings got yanked out. This cabinet was bolted to the wall and there was nothing wrong with the hardwood behind it. Look at this. That’s impact, Timmy.”
“Is that right?” Brooks said.
“Look, from the force of the destruction, I’d say this wall took a whale of a hit. But there’s no impact at all to the other side, is there? So the cabinet got yanked.”
“What about impact from within the wall?” Brooks asked.
Hughes looked at the younger man blankly for a moment. “Now where’s the momentum going to come from for something like that?” he asked.
Brooks shrugged. “Don’t know,” he admitted. “Dumb idea?”
“Dumb idea,” Hughes confirmed. “You said it. I didn’t.”
Tim Brooks didn’t bother to recount his own version of events, as seen from the next room, involving the misty cloudy ominous black form that evolved from the wreckage.
“That’s the gospel, Timmy,” Hughes said. “Hard to figure what could have happened. I can only tell what didn’t happen. But, uh, you know these Hollywood people. Probably had six nude starlets hangin’ on the china cabinet with six guys pulling at their buns. Sorry I missed it.”
“Me too,” Brooks said.
“Look here,” said Hughes. Hughes had grown up around housing and its construction. He knew of which he spoke. “This here’s one of the main uprights supporting this building,” he said, indicating a large brown timber within the wall. The shattered plaster, missing from the surface, had left it exposed. “These bolts were ripped out so hard that even the main beam suffered damage.”
From behind, Agannis watched and listened.
“Damage how severe?” Brooks asked.
“Severe enough for me to have to go downstairs and have a look-see,” Hughes said. “It might need to be steadied. It might need some modern support.” Hughes shook his head. “Really is hard to figure,” he muttered, “what could possibly have been strong enough to wrench them bolts straight out of there?”
Brooks shrugged. “Emmet, you’d know better than I would,” he said.
“I’d expect so,” Hughes said, starting to smile again. “Seeing’s how I’m the contractor and you’re the cop.” He paused. “Did Miss Carlson leave the cellar door unlocked?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Brooks answered. “I haven’t checked it yet.”
“Hope so,” Hughes said.
Brooks went to the kitchen and tried the door. It was open. He reached into the dark staircase that led downward beneath the house, found an electrical switch and turned on some lights.
“Yes, it’s open,” he called out. “Anyone coming downstairs with me?”
Lieutenant Agannis walked into the kitchen. “You check it out, Timmy,” he said patiently.
“Call me if you need me.” Brooks hesitated. Then he descended slowly to the basement at 17 Cort Street.
He went down step by step, that sense of foreboding that he had felt once before returning to him as he descended. The steps were long, narrow and old. They cre
aked badly. When he arrived on the concrete section of the basement, he stopped.
He looked around. There were numerous overhead pipes which sweated badly and perspired onto the floor. The furnace loomed like a boxcar in the middle of an open space, its aluminum arms and ducts leading to various heating panels throughout the house.
Brooks walked slowly along the concrete. He waited for that internal voice to set itself off again—to tease him, to torment him.
Suddenly he felt something. It was against his cheek. Light and feathery, as gossamer as the touch of a spirit. He swept at it with his hand and came away with a thick mass of cobweb.
He wiped it off his palm. Against all rational judgment, he found himself anxious to return upstairs. But he refused to become frightened. He hated to admit it, but he almost sensed that he was close to something. And that he was being watched.
“Anything here?” Brooks asked aloud. He paused and waited.
“Anyone got a message for me?”
Silence. No answer. Not even the voice that came from some other dimension in time and space. “Some other universe, one very different from ours,” George Osaro might have said. Brooks grew bolder.
“Scared of me, huh?” he asked, louder still.
Brooks remembered the window shades that had shot skyward in his own home. He waited for a similar phenomenon, never straying too far from his path back to the steps. But again, no response.
He turned. He walked back to the steps and climbed them.
Was he being watched? Or was he imagining the sensation? He gained the top of the stairs, turned around and looked back down.
Still, nothing.
He turned off the light and stared down into the darkness.
Nothing.
He closed the door and dropped the latch upon it. But he left it unlocked.
Brooks walked back out to the living room. Agannis was sitting on the sofa, smoking and chatting. Emmet Hughes was talking measurements at the points of damage to the wall, returning the police lieutenant’s conversation as he worked.
“So you’re going to be here by yourself, are you?” Agannis asked.