3 TERRIFYING THRILLERS

by Jude Hardin

  “I have tried. I’ve been kept here for a reason, a reason that is unknown to me. Perhaps the reason I’m here is to stop you from killing your mother. Maybe now I can pass through. Take my hand and we’ll try together.”

  “Fuck you,” Lori said. She darted upward, and then stalled and came back down in a nosedive. She was headed directly toward John Rock. There was nothing he could do to stop her. He gave Mildred a nod, knowing he would soon be joining her in the spiritual realm.

  Then, a split second before impact, an army of apparitions—hundreds of them—surrounded John and engulfed Lori Lorry and carried her away in a fiery cloud.

  Deeply, cruelly, demonically, Lori’s last words were I’ll be back.

  And then it was over.

  John exhaled a breath of relief. All the spirits were gone now, and the sky cleared to reveal a bright half-moon and a million twinkling stars.

  John looked up at the broken window he had fallen through. The nurse named Amanda, the one who had spoken to him in the hall, looked down on him with pursed lips.

  “Damn it,” she said. “You should have gone back to bed like I told you.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  John Rock was hoisted to the roof of the west tower in an apparatus called a Stokes basket, a specialized stretcher normally used in search and rescue operations. From there he was transported back to the emergency room and treated for minor cuts and abrasions. They wanted him to return to his room on the ninth floor for further evaluation, but he refused. He grabbed his backpack and walked through the automatic exit doors and didn’t look back. He figured Jana Lorry would be all right now. While John was in the ER, Mildred had sent him a message. She vowed to become Jana’s guardian angel and protect her forever.

  Lori Lorry said she would be back, but John doubted it. Her presence no longer caused a blip on his cerebral radar. He sensed she had been taken to a place far, far away.

  He walked on.

  #

  Sergeant Bryan Richardson took the exit back into town. The radio wasn’t on, but he kept hearing hear what sounded like an announcer in the distance. Like someone calling a ballgame or something.

  His cell phone rang. The caller ID said Tara. It was his fiancé.

  “Hey, babe,” Richardson said.

  “Hey, where are you? Are we having dinner tonight or not? It’s getting late and I’m starving.”

  “Sorry. It’s been a busy day. Go ahead and eat. I might be awhile.”

  “I guess this is my reward for getting involved with a cop,” Tara said.

  “Yeah, kinda comes with the territory.”

  Silence, and then, “You’re not out working on a…to-do list, are you?”

  “Well…”

  “Bryan, I thought you were over that. When you stopped going to the therapy sessions—”

  “There’s nothing wrong with being organized, Tara. Maybe you should try it sometime. You can’t even find your car keys in the morning.”

  “Those lists you come up with aren’t part of an organized life; they’re part of an obsessive-compulsive life. You have a disease, a mental illness. You cannot control yourself. You need to get back in therapy.”

  “Don’t tell me what I need,” Richardson said.

  “Maybe I should just tell you goodbye.”

  “Can we talk about this when I get home?”

  “I might not be here when you get home.”

  “Come on, babe. Give me a break. I’ve been trying. It’s just a habit, you know?”

  “I’m sorry. I can’t take it anymore.”

  “I’m coming home now, okay? You’re the most important thing in the world to me, sweetheart, and I would do anything to keep from losing you. I’m coming home now.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise. I’ll see you in a bit.”

  “Okay. I love you.”

  “Love you too.”

  Richardson disconnected. He had told his fiancé a little fib, but it would be okay. She would never find out. He would try to hurry, but it was of the utmost importance to take care of this one last thing on his list:

  KILL JOHN ROCK.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  John Rock felt sorry for the old lady working the counter at McDonald’s. She was obviously past retirement age, and had probably taken the minimum wage job to make ends meet. Or maybe she was just lonely and bored and needed something to help pass the time. John didn’t know. He was a psychic medium, not a mind reader.

  “Can I help you?” she said.

  “Coffee,” John said. “And a cherry pie.”

  “It’ll take a while on the coffee. I’ll have to make a pot.”

  “OK.”

  She rang up the order. John handed her the money.

  “Why do you look so familiar?” she said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re that guy, aren’t you? That guy on TV who talks to dead people. I used to watch that show all the time. Break on Through with John Rock. That’s it. Shoot, that must have been twenty years ago. But I remember. You’re that guy. Hey Julie, you’ll never guess who’s here.”

  Julie looked toward the front counter and shrugged. She was busy with a customer at the drive-thru.

  “I’m afraid you have me mixed up with someone else,” John said.

  “You’re not the guy on TV?”

  “No.”

  “Well, you sure do look like him. Come to think of it, though, he wasn’t as tall as you are. But you look like him in the face.”

  John nodded. The old lady shuffled to the drink station and started building a pot of coffee.

  John hated to burst her bubble, but it had been a long day and he didn’t feel like being famous right now. He didn’t feel like explaining why the show had been cancelled over twenty years ago and how his life had sort of fallen apart after that and why he was a man of the road now with no permanent address. He didn’t feel like signing any autographs or having his picture taken with anyone.

  It had been a long day, and several people had died because of a restless and violent entity named Lori Lorry. Lori was the spirit of an aborted fetus, determined to exact revenge on anyone who’d had a hand in snuffing out her life before it got started. John had heard of similar hauntings from a variety of cultures, although before today he had never been involved with one himself.

  The young man who had fathered Lori was dead, as were the young man’s parents. The nurse who had assisted with the procedure was killed with a shotgun blast to the head, and the police officer who tried to save her ended up being tortured and mutilated before bleeding to death in the parking lot. The doctor who ran the abortion clinic was still alive, but only barely. His bowels had been scalded with a boiling enema and his kidneys surgically removed with a paring knife and poultry scissors. Lori’s mother, Jana Lorry, was in the hospital being treated for seizures. John knew the grand mal events were the direct result of Jana being possessed by her daughter Lori, although of course no doctor would ever admit to that kind of unscientific diagnosis.

  Anyway, it was all over now, thanks in part to the tumor in John Rock’s brain. A benign mass the size of a robin’s egg allowed him to hear voices from the spiritual realm sometimes. Hearing voices from the spiritual realm sometimes had made him rich and famous for a short while. Now the talent—or curse, depending on how you looked at it—helped John help other people as he traveled aimlessly around the country. He only wished he could turn it on and off at will. He wished he could speak with the dead on his own terms instead of theirs.

  But regardless of John Rock’s psychic shortcomings, a band of apparitions had carried Lori Lorry to a place far, far away, and an altruistic entity named Mildred had vowed to watch over Jana Lorry for the rest of Jana’s life. It made John feel good that he had played a part, however small, in resolving the day’s supernatural crises.

  “Here’s your coffee and your pie,” the old lady behind the counter said.

  “Thanks.”

  �
�You sure you’re not that guy?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Well, enjoy your supper.”

  John picked up the orange plastic tray and carried it to a table where someone had left a newspaper. He was almost out of money. He looked through the classifieds, thinking he might stay in town a few days if he could find some temporary work.

  The coffee was fresh and hot and strong, just the way John Rock liked it. He opened the cherry pie and took a bite, and suddenly it felt as though someone had jammed a sharpened pencil into his right ear. He closed his eyes, and a barrage of liquid colors swirled through his consciousness like a cyclone in a paint factory. When everything settled, he clearly saw a vision of Sergeant Bryan Richardson driving slowly down Sixth Street in his unmarked police car.

  John had spent most of the day with Sergeant Richardson. They’d worked together trying to stop Lori Lorry’s murder and mayhem. Richardson was a good man. John considered him a friend.

  So why hadn’t Richardson gone home to his fiancé, like he said he was going to do? Why was he cruising an area known to be populated by drug dealers and prostitutes?

  The vision felt like the ones John had experienced earlier, the ones brought on by Lori Lorry. But that was impossible. Lori was gone.

  So what the hell was happening?

  John didn’t know, but he decided he better find out.

  It had been a long, long day, and apparently it wasn’t over yet.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Sergeant Bryan Richardson finally found the girl he wanted. She was blond and petite, and she wore a T-shirt that showed off the piercing in her belly button. Leather skirt, sparkly platform shoes. She was the girl of his dreams.

  Richardson had stowed his dry-cleaned uniforms in the trunk, along with his police radio and service revolver. He’d picked up a generic black sports jersey at a local discount store, and he wore that with his dark green uniform pants.

  He eased to the curb and lowered the passenger’s side window.

  “Hey, baby,” he said.

  “You a cop?”

  “Do I look like a fucking cop?”

  “You a cop? Yes or no.”

  “No,” Richardson lied.

  “This sure does look like a cop’s car.”

  “It was in a former life. I got it at an auction.”

  “You need a date?” she said.

  Richardson took a long look at her. Late twenties or early thirties. She’d appeared younger from a distance. She had small teeth, yellowed from years of cigarette smoke. Dark circles under bloodshot eyes. What a turn-off. So unattractive. But Richardson didn’t care about any of that. He wasn’t going to marry the bitch. Hell, he wasn’t even going to fuck her.

  “You need a date or not?” she repeated.

  “Yeah. Hop in.”

  She opened the door and climbed into the passenger seat. Richardson pulled away from the curb.

  “I got a room over here at the Hawthorne,” she said. “It’s going to be three hundred for an hour. Up front.”

  “Is that for everything?”

  “Straight sex. Nothing kinky.”

  Richardson tooled around the block, pulled into the parking lot of the Hawthorne Hotel. He put the car in park and killed the engine. Pulled his wallet out and handed her three hundred dollar bills.

  “Let me see it before we go up,” she said.

  “See what?”

  “Your thing. I usually don’t even do black guys, but it’s been a slow night.”

  Richardson unzipped his pants and showed her what she wanted to see. “Think you can handle it?” he said.

  She stroked it once with her fingertips. “Sure. Hang on just a second.”

  She pulled out her cell phone and thumbed in a text while Richardson tended to his fly. They got out of the car, and Richardson followed her through a side entrance and then to her room on the second floor. She swiped her key. The little green light came on and the lock clicked open and they walked in.

  “What’s you name?” Richardson said.

  “Pam.”

  “So Pam, here’s the deal. I told you a little fib a while ago.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I lied about not being a cop.”

  “Motherfucker,” she said. “I knew it.”

  “But don’t worry. I’m not going to arrest you.”

  “You’re not?”

  “No. I’m not going to arrest you. I’m going to kill you.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  In a book published nearly twenty years ago, John Rock 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, and he knew about it long before any doctors detected the tumor in his brain. It allowed him to detect the presence of supernatural beings as easily as most people can detect a howling wolf or rotting milk. As he jogged toward Sixth Street, bright yellow dots flared through his brain like a jarful of radioactive fireflies.

  It was the same signal he’d gotten earlier when he approached the scene where the police officer and nurse had died. It was Lori Lorry. The aborted fetus. No doubt about it.

  But Lori Lorry had been taken to a deeper realm by an entire army of spirits. John had seen it happen. There was no way she could have made it back from that, yet here she was. John didn’t understand it. To his knowledge, this had never happened before. This was a first.

  He made it to the intersection of Sixth and Lindberg, turned and walked toward the Hawthorne Hotel. His Cerebral Radar started blipping like crazy, and then another pencil stabbed him in the ear. Excruciating redhot electric pain. He staggered, grabbed a lamppost to keep from collapsing on the sidewalk. Sergeant Bryan Richardson was in a room at the Hawthorne with a white woman. Blond hair, pale skin, dark circles under her eyes. Leather skirt, sparkly platform shoes. Probably a prostitute. Probably a junkie. She had a very frightened look on her face.

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” she said.

  “I’m not going to arrest you, Pam,” Richardson said. “I’m going to kill you. It’s as simple as that.”

  “You’re insane. My manager will cut your fucking balls off. Get the fuck out of my room, asshole.”

  “Manager. You mean pimp?”

  “Whatever. Get the fuck—”

  “How many times you been pregnant, you little cunt. How many times has your manager sent you to Dr. Bratcher over at the abortion clinic? How many innocent lives have you flushed down the goddamn toilet?”

  She pulled out her cell phone and started for the door. Richardson grabbed her by the arm and threw her on the bed and covered her face with a pillow before she could scream.

  “If you cooperate, I’ll make it quick and painless,” Richardson said. “If you try to fight me, you’re in for a world of hurt.”

  She kneed him in the crotch. He rolled away, doubled over in pain. She started punching something into her cell phone, but before she could finish the text and send it, Richardson was up and on her again.

  This time, he had a knife.

  He threw her back down on the bed. Her phone skittered across the nightstand and landed by the floor lamp in the corner, well out of reach. She got half a scream out before Richardson jammed the knife blade into the fleshy area behind her chinbone. The blade went through her chin and pierced her tongue and lodged into her hard palate. Blood gushed from her mouth and trickled from her nose.

  “Go ahead and scream now, bitch,” Richardson said.

  The occupants in the room next door might have heard Pam’s bloodcurdling yawp, but John Rock knew—and of course Sergeant Richardson knew—this fleabag dump called the Hawthorne Hotel was a haven for druggies and whores. Druggies and whores tended to mind their own business. It wasn’t likely any of them were going to dial 9-1-1 over a scream. They probably heard them all night every night. Business as usual. Calling the cops would only draw attention to themselves, attention they didn’t want or need.

  Although sever
e and debilitating and disfiguring, Pam’s injuries were not life-threatening. Not yet. She sat up and looked in the mirror over the dresser, the knife’s stag grips protruding from the bottom of her chin. Her eyes bugged out and she snorted and started trembling all over.

  Richardson just stood by and laughed.

  John Rock could see everything as it was happening, but he was paralyzed against the lamppost. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t rush to the hotel to help the poor girl. Not that rushing to help her would have been a very good idea, anyway. This whole thing was probably a trap. John Rock was probably the entity’s real target, not the prostitute. Pam was probably just bait. The entity probably wanted to get John out of the way before going back after Jana, the mother, and Theodore Bratcher, the doctor who performed the abortion.

  If Lori Lorry was responsible for what was happening now, and John was pretty sure she was, then it seemed she had actually gained strength. Incredible. Maybe it was too late for the little blond call girl named Pam, but John Rock was determined to stop Lori Lorry, somehow, before she destroyed even more lives.

  Richardson reached over and yanked the knife from Pam’s chin. Bright red blood dribbled out behind it. Pam grabbed the trash can by the bed and started heaving into it, coughing out chunks of what looked like raw liver. It was actually blood that had drained into her stomach and clotted. She coughed and spit and vomited, tears and snot dripping from her face in streams.

  “Don’t you wish you had opted to cooperate?” Richardson said. His voice had deepened, and it seemed to be coming from several different directions.

  Pam somehow managed to utter a garbled version of fuck you immediately before Richardson snatched the trash can from her hands and flung it across the room. He backhanded her across the face, knocking her flat on her back. She didn’t move. John didn’t know if she was unconscious or dead. He hoped she was dead. If she was still alive, Sergeant Bryan Richardson—that is, Lori Lorry—was going to keep tormenting her. John couldn’t bear to watch any more of it, but he didn’t have a choice. It was like a nightmare you try and try to wake up from, but can’t.