by Matt Drabble
The one thing that his grandfather had left him with was now sitting in the car’s glove box. Randall pulled out the glistening service revolver and turned it over in his hands. The Enfield No. 2 Mk I revolver felt strange in his hands but he was glad of the hefty weight. He didn’t know why he still maintained the thing meticulously while the rest of his life had fallen apart, but right at that moment he was thankful that he had.
He checked that it was loaded and slipped the weapon into the back of his waistband. The night air was humid and dawn didn’t feel that far away. As he approached the front door to knock, he couldn’t help but wonder just what the approaching day was going to bring.
----------
Jane looked at Danny in shock as someone knocked on the front door loudly. “Who’s that?” she mouthed silently.
Danny shrugged his shoulders in reply with a look of surprise on his face.
The door was banged a second time, only this time more insistently.
“Screw it,” Jane sighed and walked to the door before Danny could stop her. She threw the door open hard enough to take a chunk out of the plaster on the inside wall and stood there staring at a man whose face she recognised but couldn’t put a name to.
“Zerneck?” Danny exclaimed from behind her.
The name suddenly clicked into place for her and she remembered the reporter who had tried to ruin her reputation and out her as a fraud to the world. “Randall Zerneck, the man who brought down a killer and saved a country.”
“I guess you’re not keeping up to date with current events,” Zerneck smiled humourlessly. “Commander Barrett was the real hero. I was working for him the whole time.”
“Really?” she asked, immediately regretting the question as his face frowned mockingly.
“What the hell are you doing here, Zerneck?” Danny demanded.
“Looking for answers. Barrett has got me on a short leash.”
“How so?”
“Your civilian aide, Croft. I found her body but didn’t report it. Barrett says that he can tie me to the scene and a whole lot more if I don’t play ball.”
“He wouldn’t go that far, would he?” Jane asked.
“Look at where we are now,” Danny replied snidely as the thought of his boss’s face crossed his mind. “There’s a warrant out for me and he had you committed.”
“Fair point,” she conceded.
“Who told you we were here?” Danny asked Randall.
“I had no idea that you two were here. I got an anonymous phone call to come to this cabin and a promise of answers; I suppose that we’re the only ones left with the motivation to keep looking for them.”
----------
Jane didn’t allow the pressures of gender programming to make her feel guilty as Danny sorted through the cupboards preparing a meal. They had been on the run all evening and despite the late hour, they found themselves surprisingly hungry. Randall was slumped in an armchair across from her in the open living area.
The reporter was still clutching a bottle of whisky that he’d found in a cabinet and it was now almost half empty. While her ability had been compromised at the school, she still trusted it enough to believe the reading that she was getting from him. She was almost sure that he didn’t pose a present threat to them; he was just another lost soul looking for answers - the three of them had that in common. The big question, of course, was just who had sent him here in the first place, and, for that matter, who had known that she and Danny would be here in the first place?
She started to run through the suspects in her mind. Most of Danny’s team were either confirmed dead or suspected so. The fire at the school had burned with such intensity that Danny had told her that the medical examiner would be sifting through the remains for some time trying to determine just who lay among the ashes. If this was a movie, she wouldn’t be shocked to find that someone who she’d previously thought of as dead should suddenly put in a miraculous appearance.
Holding Kline’s pen had shown her that it had been his hands that had taken so many lives, but there was still an unshakable feeling that this was not over.
She busied herself with nosing around the cabin. The place was spotless and minus the mouldy aroma that she would have associated with such a building. The layout was functional, if a little cold, and it was hard to get a feeling of any particular person within these wooden walls. She was sure that not all old people would be prone to the accumulation of stuff but the cabin felt bare and devoid of its owner.
She eased her way further inside, pushing open doors gently so as not to let Danny know that she was prying. It wasn’t just her general curiosity that drove her on - there was a powerful need to understand what was happening, and she wouldn’t be passive anymore.
She found the master bedroom and stepped inside. The furniture all looked handmade and there was a large double bed carved from oak. A chest of drawers stood against the far wall and there were some antique photo frames on top. The sight of the first personal item caught her attention and she crossed the room quickly. The images showed what looked like the same man through several ages. An infant boy was standing proudly naked on a beach somewhere with a wide grin as though daring the world to defy him. An older child was flying a kite with fascination deeply etched across his face as the bright plumes twirled and danced on a summer’s soft breeze. There was a young man in graduation robes smiling proudly at the camera, a world stretching out before him with bright promises of tomorrow.
In all the images, from boy to young man, his face seemed happy, but there was a darkness in his eyes that glowered from within and it scared her a little.
“Snooping?” Danny’s voice startled her from behind.
“A little, sorry,” she admitted. “Are these the only photos in this place?”
“Honestly, I don’t know. This is the first time that I’ve been up here and Nathan has always been a little camera shy. I always figured that his…, our…, lives were a little more private than others.”
“I’d like to meet him, you know, after this is all over. You’re a lucky man to have someone to fight for, Danny; don’t ever forget that.”
“It’s a shame that it took me this long to realise it. I only hope that it’s not too late,” Danny said shyly. “I have got one photo,” he said, perking up. “I…, I kept it with me, but hidden from everyone.” He took out a small passport sized photograph from his wallet and handed it to her.
The man in the image was the boy from the photos in the room, the eyes told her that. He looked familiar and it took her a few moments to try and dig through her mind to place him. “I know this guy,” she mused. “Or at least I’ve met him somewhere before. What does Nathan do?”
“He’s a fireman.”
“Was he at St Joseph’s?”
“I didn’t see him there, but I guess he probably was. I mean, every fire fighter in the county would have been called in.”
She tried to focus and dredge her memory for inspiration but the answer danced tantalisingly out of reach.
“What’s going on?” Randall asked, joining them a little unsteadily. “Hey, I know that guy,” he said, looking at the photo that Jane held.
“From where?” Danny asked puzzled.
“Well the hair’s different and he looks younger but he’s a gravedigger up in Brightford of all things. I met him when I was chasing down a dead end lead about the original Crucifier case. The guy scammed me with some bogus info. I guess everyone’s looking to play everyone else.”
“Wait a minute,” Danny said, holding up his hands. “That can’t be right.”
“Oh, I never forget a face, Inspector; it’s a curse of the job. Alexandru … that was his name. He’s Hungarian. He was looking for a passport for his sister. I lied and told him that I could get Ramsey to organise one for him.”
“Ramsey, that’s where I know him from!” Jane suddenly exclaimed. “That guy was Ramsey’s personal assistant, Jonathan Banks. I remember now….” Her w
ords trailed off as the enormity of the situation thundered home with dizzying speed.
“Now just hold on a minute,” Danny interjected with passion. “This is Nathan, Nathan Earl,” he said angrily, snatching the photograph back from Jane. “We’ve been together almost two years!”
“No, Danny,” Jane said quietly. “That’s our monster. Martin Kline might have been the hands, but this is the puppet master.”
“Bullshit!” Danny spat and Jane could see his personal mind fighting with his cop’s brain for supremacy.
“Then who the hell is he?” Randall demanded and it was then that Jane’s mind exploded with the answer.
It was an answer that seemed so utterly absurd, but in her heart she knew it to be true as the cogs turned and slipped into their notches with expert precision. She had grown up as an only child and had never had any reason to think otherwise, until now. “He’s my brother,” she managed before she fell away and the darkness took her.
----------
“Hi, Sis,” the voice greeted Jane as she slipped beyond the veil. There was no light here only darkness and time stood still, oblivious to the conventions of the world outside of these borders. She was drifting on air with no ground below and no sky above, only his floating voice for company.
“Hello,” she replied from inside her mind. “We’re alone here, aren’t we?”
“You should know better than to ask silly questions by now, Janey.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why everything?”
“That is a journey that would take an ocean of time to cross, Janey.”
“Don’t call me that,” she bristled.
“Isn’t that how siblings speak?” the man’s voice asked innocently.
“We’re not siblings; we’re nothing. I don’t even know who you are!”
“Of course you do, Janey … sorry, Jane,” he corrected himself. “You knew the second that I allowed you to. I don’t mind admitting that I was starting to worry if you’d ever be ready.”
“Ready?”
“For me, for us. I’ve been pushing you hard, I know, but you’ll thank me soon, I promise.”
“This whole time you’ve been pushing me? Torturing me is more like it. What the hell is wrong with you?”
There was a long empty pause which Jane felt herself slide into. The darkness began to lighten around her and this was a side of the Shadow World that not even she had seen before.
Here, everything was the past and the present side by side, running in unison. Pictures floated and merged into each other, bubbling along on a tide of emotions. She could see herself as a small child and feel the excitement of a Christmas morning and the aching loss of her first pet’s passing. All of the images were of the most intimate nature and she had no idea just how this man had managed to gain access to her own private vault.
“I know you, Jane,” his voice cooed lovingly. “I know every inch of you and your life. I know that you like comic books and, more specifically, you’re a big Incredible Hulk fan - his ambiguous nature appeals to you. The Hulk isn’t good or bad, anymore than a hurricane is. He is simply a force of nature and that’s how you like to think of yourself. I know that you feel guilty every time that you forget to fill up the wild bird feeders in your garden as you believe that they judge you with their beady watching eyes. I also know that sometimes you have nightmares about those same birds pecking your eyes out while you sleep and that you’ll wake up blind.”
Jane listened to the voice and found herself unsurprised by his knowledge. The whole thing was bizarre, and yet a lifetime with her own gift made the bizarre less unlikely.
“I don’t understand any of this,” she sighed.
“Do you remember your childhood? Do you remember a time when your family was whole?”
It was a time before her father had left, a time that so was cherished to her that to even peek into that past was to tear open a barely healed wound. Her home had been happy and her childhood blissful. The house where she still lived had been full of laughter and happy faces, right up until he’d left, leaving a gaping hole behind. Her mother had always refused to talk about the man who’d left his family and, as time passed, Jane’s will to keep asking had strangely faded.
“It was her. She clouded your mind, eroding all questions until you couldn’t bear to keep looking backwards anymore.”
“She wouldn’t.”
“Oh, but she did.”
“You shut your mouth. You know nothing about my mother,” Jane snapped, feeling the rising tide of anger reaching the surface.
“I know everything, Jane,” he laughed loudly. “There are no corners in your soul that are unseen to my eyes.”
“Bullshit, you’re just a voice in the darkness, a faceless coward hiding in the shadows.”
“Is this our first fight?” he asked hopefully. “Brother and sister tearing it up in the backyard.”
Jane felt a childlike edge to this man’s nature lurking beneath his tricks and power. Whatever was the truth, he firmly believed everything that he was saying.
“Are you going to try and tell me that my father, my father, cheated on my mother and you are some kind of bastard offspring?” she snorted. “Because if you are then let me tell you that my father would never have cheated, never!”
“But wouldn’t it answer so many questions as to why he left?”
“I don’t believe it, I won’t.”
“Something broke your family apart, Jane - something big.”
Jane was tired of his attempts to smear her father and her family and was glad to finally grasp hold of something solid to fire back in his direction. “The only trouble with your theory is that my gift comes from my mother, not my father,” she said triumphantly. “If we shared a father then you would not share my gift.”
“I never said that we shared a father,” he said softly. “We shared a mother.”
“No,” she stated firmly, closing her eyes against his voice, blocking his words.
A picture floated up in her mind of home and of family. It was a summer afternoon and they were playing in the back garden. She was just a child running through the warm grass, playing happily beneath the hot sun and endless blue sky. Her mother was sitting on a garden chair, sipping something cool from a tall glass and her father was chasing her, his hands held out like monster claws as he growled and laughed. The memory was comforting, like a warm woollen jumper taken from the dryer on a cold winter’s day. It was one of many images that she held in her mind, snapshots of a happy childhood surrounded by love and family.
As she watched the image move like a flickering sepia home movie, it started to buckle and blister. The faces began to fade in and out, as though fighting for survival. There seemed to be another image underneath that was determined to push its way out into the world, given birth and life for the first time and struggling to breathe.
“Don’t, please,” she whispered fearfully as her world threatened to be torn apart.
She tried to hold the memory together as fiercely as she could, but reality was stronger and the scales fell from her eyes.
Her father had been long gone by the time she would have noticed his absence. Her childhood had been full of a father, but it had been an image projected by her mother’s love. The man had died not long after Jane had been born and he had only been kept alive as a shadow.
“I’m sorry, Jane,” the man said with genuine sympathy.
“Please,” she begged.
“It’s better this way, Jane, trust me.”
She watched the film play on as her mother sat upon a garden chair, her face creased and sweating with exertion as she made a father run with his daughter and consequently the child would never know heartbreaking loss too soon.
Off in the background there was another man working on the vegetable patch. He seemed oddly familiar; it wasn’t his appearance, so much as his presence.
“My father used to do some odd jobs around you
r place when you were growing up,” the man said fondly. “Your mother was a good woman, Jane. I don’t want you to think poorly of her; she was just lonely.”
“I don’t understand how she was able to project my father’s image to me. I’ve only ever been able to see the dead, never project them.”
“Don’t worry, Jane, you will. I’ll teach you,” her brother said happily. “There’s a whole world for me to teach you. Trust me, you’ve yet to scratch the surface of what we can do.”
“Wait, wait a minute, what about Marty Kline? What about the Crucifier? What about all the deaths?”
“Martin Kline was a deeply disturbed soul. So much torture and pain in that boy, it seemed like such a waste. I helped him to fulfil his potential, to realise his dreams and shape his destiny. We all have parts to play, Jane, in the grand scheme of things. I needed a case to pull you back from your exile, something that would be too powerful for you to pass up. Your guilt over the original Crucifer case was the key. I took young Martin and used his abused past to forge a new future for us, Jane.”
“What about the school? What about St Joseph’s? All those girls?”
“Call it a…, flair for the theatrical,” he laughed. “You’re a tough cookie, Jane. I couldn’t have you catching up to me before I was ready. I had to split up your team in case you found me too soon. Inspector Meyers was proving to be far more of an adversary than I had ever expected. The Crucifier had served his purpose and so Martin’s time was up. He died and I had to bloody my hands at the school in order to shut Meyers’ investigation down. Once it was clear that he had led his team into the fire at the school, even if the flames didn’t get him, at the very least he would be removed from my path through his own incompetence.”
“Why? Why would you take advantage of a sick mind like Marty’s? Why would you use Martin to kill those women like the Crucifier did? Why couldn’t you just do it yourself?”
“I’m…, I’m not a murderer, Jane,” he replied, shocked and offended. “Although I must admit that when I did have to get my hands dirty with a couple of those police officers at St Joseph’s, I did enjoy it. There’s something to be said for the do-it-yourself approach, especially when you spend your life behind the scenes.”