3 TERRIFYING THRILLERS

by Jude Hardin

  Sam pulled to the back of the building and parked facing a concrete wall. Nobody would be able to see the car from the street, and there was nothing but woods behind the building.

  “You’re picking someone up here?” Jeri said.

  Sam punched her in the jaw with his fist. Her eyes crossed and her arms flailed and then she went slack. A knockout! Sam keyed his walkie-talkie and told his supervisor he was going on break. He had fifteen minutes. He would have to work quickly.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Sergeant Richardson wrote something else on his to-do list, and then tapped on the desk nervously with the eraser end of his pencil. “Do you realize how preposterous all this sounds, Mr. Rock?”

  “You said you saw my show on television. Did you believe what you saw?”

  “What can I say? I’m a natural born skeptic. I always figured all that crap was phony.”

  “It wasn’t.”

  A white hot bolt of pain shot through John Rock’s eyes, and suddenly he was in the backseat of a car. There was a man and a woman in the front seat. The woman was unconscious. In his peripheral vision, John saw a sign that said Future Site—Proton Therapy Treatment Center.

  “Mr. Rock?”

  John felt a hand on his arm. He woke from the trance. Sergeant Richardson was standing beside him.

  “She’s at it again,” John said.

  “What?”

  “The entity. Another murder is about to take place.”

  “I think we’re done here,” Richardson said. “You have a nice day, Mr. Rock.”

  “If you hurry, you might be able to stop it. Is there some sort of proton beam place being built around here?”

  “Yeah. Over at the hospital. Why?”

  “That’s where they are. A security guard is about to kill a nurse.”

  Richardson sat back down in his chair. “I think you’re insane. I think you’ve been drinking too much of your own Kool-Aid. But you know what? I’m going to send a car over there so we can put this nonsense to rest. You can go wait in the ante room. Or, you can hit the street. Doesn’t matter to me.”

  “If you’re going to send a car, do it now. There isn’t much time.”

  John picked up his backpack and left Sergeant Richardson’s office. He gave H. Parker a nod on his way out the door.

  John asked a man on the sidewalk how to get to the hospital.

  “It’s about a mile up that way,” the man said.

  John started walking. He knew he wouldn’t make it to the hospital in time to stop the murder, but maybe the police would. If not, John could at least point out the perpetrator.

  It was a security guard named Sam. It wasn’t his fault. He was possessed by the entity. But he would have to take the blame. They couldn’t arrest a ghost. John Rock wanted to talk to Sam, maybe get to the bottom of why the spirit was so angry. He walked faster.

  #

  Sam got out of the car, opened the trunk, and grabbed his toolbox. He never went anywhere without his tools, even when he was driving one of the security vehicles at work. Nothing worse than being without a socket wrench when you needed one.

  He opened the box. There was a roll of duct tape on top. He took it out and used it to bind Jeri’s wrists and ankles. She was starting to wake up, and Sam didn’t want her to scratch his eyes or kick his balls. He also didn’t want her to scream, so he covered her mouth with tape as well.

  Her skin was hot. She was burning up with fever, and her nose was full of snot. Must have a cold or the flu or something. She wasn’t breathing very well with the tape on her mouth, so Sam pulled it off. He didn’t want her to die yet. He wanted her to feel some pain.

  He put the duct tape back in the toolbox and took out a pair of pliers. Jeri was awake now, little mewling sounds coming from her throat.

  “Why are you doing this?” she said between sobs.

  “I don’t know,” Sam said. He chewed into her left eyebrow with the pliers and twisted the meticulously-groomed feature off with a quick jerk. Jeri’s skull showed through the little window Sam had created. Cool!

  Between Jeri’s blood curdling screams, Sam heard someone outside the car shout, “Freeze!”

  Damn. Just when he was starting to have fun.

  CHAPTER SIX

  A strip of hairy flesh dangled from the tool in the security guard’s hand, like some sort of gruesome caterpillar. Patrolman Tyler Berry trained his pistol on the man’s chest, told him to get out of the car slowly with his hands laced behind his head. The man complied.

  “On the ground,” Tyler shouted.

  Tyler holstered his pistol, walked to the suspect and handcuffed him. He read him his rights. What a scumbag. Guys like this don’t deserve rights, Tyler thought. He kicked the man in the ribs. Hard.

  The man rolled over on his back. His nametag said Sam Keller. In a deep and resonant voice that seemed to be coming from more than one direction Sam Keller said, “You’ll pay for that.”

  “Shut the fuck up,” Tyler said.

  The woman in the car was crying and screaming. She was hysterical. Tyler walked around to the passenger’s side and opened the door. Christ almighty. The guard had torn a piece of her face off.

  Talk about a blood bath. Her uniform was saturated. The wound appeared to have clotted, but Tyler figured she would need a transfusion.

  And lots of stitches.

  “Help is on the way,” Tyler said. He had called for police backup and an ambulance. “Is there anything I can do for you right now?”

  “Untie me?”

  Tyler had been focusing on the ghastly facial wound and the gallon of spilled blood, and had failed to notice the duct tape. He unwrapped her ankles, then started on her wrists.

  “What’s your name?” Tyler asked.

  “Jeri.”

  She had calmed down some. As soon as her arms were free, she stood and gave Tyler a hug.

  “Thank you for saving my life,” she said.

  Then her head exploded like a melon all over the top of the car.

  Sam Keller stood there holding the Remington twelve-gauge pump that had been issued to Tyler at the beginning of his shift. The shotgun had been secured in the overhead rack of Tyler’s police car, and the only key to the rack was in a compartment in Tyler’s gunbelt. What the fuck?

  The barrel looked like a drainpipe, and it was pointed directly at Tyler’s heart.

  Not only had Sam somehow managed to break into the shotgun rack, he had also broken the chain connecting his handcuffs. The cuffs were still on his wrists, but the chain was disjointed and his hands were free.

  Impossible.

  No human could have done that.

  Sam racked a shell into the chamber. Tyler thought about going for his pistol, but he knew one twitch might put him in tomorrow’s obituaries. Better to buy some time and wait for the cavalry.

  “What do you want?” Tyler said.

  “I wanted her dead, and now she is,” Sam said. The deep resonant voice again. Coming from nowhere, from everywhere.

  “Why? Why did you kill her?”

  “None of your business.”

  “I’m an officer of the law. It is my business.”

  Sam angled the barrel downward and pulled the trigger. In an instant, Tyler Berry’s left kneecap was reduced to pulp. It looked like it had gone through a blender. Tyler fell to the ground writhing in pain.

  Sam stood over him. “That’s what you get for kicking me,” he said.

  “Jesus!” Tyler screamed. The pain was excruciating, the worst he’d ever felt. Where was backup? They should have been here by now. Please Lord let them come.

  Sam walked away and came back carrying a toolbox. He set the shotgun aside, opened the toolbox, took out a hammer and a long straight-slot screwdriver. With the hammer he drove the blade of the screwdriver through the side of Tyler’s neck and into the asphalt.

  A series of fiery electric blue arcs flared through Tyler’s nervous system like a thunderstorm, the pain in his neck in com
petition now with the pain in his knee.

  “That should keep you still while I do what I need to do,” Sam said.

  He took out a pair of Vice-Grips, adjusted the bolt, clamped the jaws onto Tyler’s front teeth. He stood and took a few steps backward and to the side. He ran up to Tyler and kicked the handles of the Vice-Grips in a fluid and graceful motion, the way the place kicker on a football team kicks a field goal. The steel tool and Tyler’s broken incisors flipped through the air, leaving a hot splatter of blood on Tyler’s face.

  On a scale of zero to ten, Tyler’s pain was at a twenty now. There were no words to describe the agony he was experiencing. He wanted to die. He prayed for death to come.

  Sam raised his arms skyward. “And it’s good!” he said, mimicking a TV commentator for an NFL game.

  Is that what this was to him? A game? How could one human being inflict this kind of torture on another?

  Suddenly Tyler felt very sorry he had kicked Sam when he was down. Tyler had abused his power, and it wasn’t the first time. Now he was being punished. Severely. Surely eternal damnation couldn’t be any worse.

  “How does that feel?” Sam said. “Want some more?”

  Tyler couldn’t speak. He shook his head and grunted.

  Sam picked up the shotgun. He stood facing Tyler’s feet.

  “I think this is the one you kicked me with,” he said, gesturing toward Tyler’s right foot.

  He racked a shell and pulled the trigger and the foot disappeared in a spray of blood and bone and gristle. A severed artery spewed like a fountain with every heartbeat.

  Tyler’s eyes rolled back in his head. He felt the world fading. His final thought was of an apple pie his grandmother had baked for him last winter. It was the closest thing to Heaven he would ever know.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Four police cars with lights flashing sped past John Rock as he approached the hospital. A fire truck and an ambulance followed. John started jogging in the same direction. By the time he made it to the Proton Therapy Center, his heart was fluttering like a hummingbird on crack.

  John was almost fifty years old, and his backpack weighed at least thirty pounds, but he had been gifted with the heart of an athlete and he kept himself in good shape. His rapid pulse was not from the run, but from being in such close proximity to the hospital itself. John hated hospitals. They were the only thing he truly feared. He guessed the red brick twin towers of this one had been built sometime in the forties or fifties, and he knew for a fact that scores of people had died there since then. Most were elderly folks who passed to the other side peacefully, but every hospital on the planet had its share of restless spirits who for one reason or another could not make the transition. Every hospital on the planet was a haunted house to the nth degree.

  Normal people had brains equipped with protective filters. Normal people never knew the entities were there. But John Rock was not normal.

  In a book published nearly twenty years ago, he had coined the term Cerebral Radar. CR for short. You were either born with it or you weren’t. John Rock was born with it. It allowed him to detect the presence of supernatural beings as easily as most people can detect a howling wolf or rotting milk. At that moment bright yellow dots flared through his brain like a jarful of radioactive fireflies.

  In the parking lot of the Proton Therapy Center there was a headless corpse lying beside a car marked SECURITY and a uniformed police officer pinned to the pavement with a screwdriver. The cop’s left knee resembled raw hamburger, and his right foot was gone altogether.

  A man wearing a white shirt with patches on the sleeves and black pants and black patent leather shoes lay facedown on the ground. Three policemen with pistols drawn stood over him. A fourth policeman stood beside one of the cruisers talking into a cell phone. The firemen and the paramedics stood beside their trucks watching. Some of them were smoking cigarettes.

  John tried to channel some energy from the entity responsible for the carnage, but there was too much static coming from the hospital. He couldn’t zone in on anything specific.

  The officer who had been talking on the cell phone turned his attention toward John and shouted, “You’re going to have to move along, pal. This is a crime scene. Police only.”

  “My name’s John Rock. Call Sergeant Richardson. I think he might be interested in talking to me.”

  “I’m not going to tell you again. Get lost, or you’ll be taking a ride to the station along with Mr. Mass Murderer here.”

  “I’m a little tired,” John said. “A ride would be nice.”

  The patrolman clipped his phone to his belt, drew his pistol and walked to where John was standing. His nametag said Fabreri.

  “I know you’re not blind,” Fabreri said. “You can see what we’re dealing with here. Now why don’t you be a good little vagrant—or should I say a good big vagrant—and get the fuck off my crime scene.”

  “I want to talk to Richardson,” John said.

  “All right, smartass. Hands behind your head.”

  John laced his hands behind his head.

  “Now turn around and get on the ground.”

  John Rock didn’t turn around.

  And he didn’t get on the ground.

  “Are you deaf, motherfucker? Turn around and get on the ground before I blow your goddamn head off.”

  John didn’t move.

  One of the other officers walked over. His nametag said Garcia.

  “Need some help, Tony?” Garcia said.

  “This stupid motherfucker is resisting arrest,” Fabreri said.

  “Why are you arresting him?”

  “I told him to move along. He didn’t.”

  “Ah. Obstructing justice. Let me talk to him a minute, Tony.”

  “No, I’m taking him down.”

  “Just let me talk to him a minute.”

  Tony Fabreri had fire in his eyes. He was about to snap. He stepped back a few feet, nostrils flaring.

  “Officer Fabreri’s just a little edgy today,” Garcia said. “Trying to quit smoking. You know how it is. So why you giving him a hard time?”

  “I was in Sergeant Richardson’s office earlier,” John said. “I told him there were going to be more murders, and he didn’t believe me. Now maybe he’ll believe me.”

  “What are you, some kind of psychic?”

  “Yes.”

  Garcia scratched his chin.

  “I’m about to Taser his ass,” Fabreri said from several feet away.

  Garcia held his palm toward Fabreri, staying in character as the good cop.

  “I’m going to call the station to verify your story,” Garcia said to John Rock. “If you’re lying, we’re going to charge you with vagrancy, obstructing justice, and resisting arrest. You’re looking at a minimum of ninety days in jail. Or you can just turn around and walk away.”

  John turned around and walked away. He didn’t trust cops, especially loose cannons like Fabreri. They could always drum up something to railroad your ass to the pea farm for three months of hard. Then if you got in a fight while you were incarcerated or pissed off a correctional officer for any of a million reasons they tacked on more time and before you knew it a year of your life had disappeared.

  While Fabreri and Garcia were still within earshot, John shouted, “Tell Richardson I’ll be by the pay phone at the library at two o’clock.”

  He walked on.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  By the time John Rock got to the public library, he was tired and hungry and dripping with sweat. He went to the men’s room and adjusted the water at the sink to a comfortable temperature. The faucet was an old-fashioned chrome job with an H handle on the left and a C handle on the right. The new ones with light sensors or timed shut-off valves were a traveling man’s worst nightmare. John hated them.

  He lathered his face with soap and carefully shaved off three days worth of whiskers with his Parker Stainless Steel Straight-Edge Barber Razor. The razor cost twenty-four dollars and
would last forever. There was a strop rolled up in his backpack he used to keep the razor sharp. The strop cost thirty dollars and would last forever. It was the cheapest way to shave, and the best way. Disposable blades were expensive and they didn’t last long and they gave you a rash. John hated them.

  It was early afternoon on a weekday and there weren’t many people at the library. Best time to take a bath. John took all his clothes off, scrubbed himself with soap and a washcloth, rinsed thoroughly, dried with a towel. He put on deodorant and a clean set of clothes. He rolled his dirty things into a laundry bag and stuffed the bag into his backpack.

  He walked into the main room and wrote his name on the waiting list for the internet. There wasn’t anyone waiting, so the librarian assigned him a terminal and told him he had thirty minutes. Unless there still wasn’t anyone waiting. Then he could use the computer as long as he wanted. The library closed at 10:00pm.

  John had a website and an email address. His website was a blog called Break On Through With John Rock, same title as his old TV show. He kept a decent following. Some were interested in contacting deceased loved ones. Others sought relief from hauntings. Some were skeptics who used science and math to argue against the existence of a spiritual world.

  Occasionally a disturbed individual would accuse John of being a devil worshipper, or even of being the devil himself, or some other such nonsense. Sometimes he would get an email from someone claiming to be a ghost. Sometimes there was a death threat. John usually shrugged it all off. It even amused him sometimes. Today it did not.

  The sender was someone named Lori Lorry, and the subject line said JERI THE NURSE GOT IT TODAY.

  John opened the email.

  My name is Lori Lorry, and I’m dead.

  I can make people do things.

  Bad things.

  The doctor is next. Unless.

  LL

  What doctor? Unless what?

  John looked at his watch. It was almost two. He walked outside and stood by the pay phone. He stood there for a while leaning against the library’s brick facade, thinking about the electronic correspondence from Lori Lorry. Strange name, for one thing. It had to have been fabricated. Who would be cruel enough to give a kid a name like that? Was Lori Lorry, or whatever her real name was, really the entity responsible for killing Colin Smith and his parents and the nurse and the patrolman? If so, an email from a spirit was unprecedented as far as John knew. He had never gotten one before, and he had never heard of anyone else getting one. He looked at his watch again. It was a little past two.