by Lee Thompson
First Edition
Published by:
DarkFuse Publications
P.O. Box 338
North Webster, IN 46555
www.darkfuse.com
The Dampness Of Mourning © 2011 by Lee Thompson
Cover Artwork © 2011 by Daniele Serra
All Rights Reserved.
Copy Editor: Steve Souza
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
For Shaun Ryan and Kevin Wallis. Thanks for walking all these miles and endless pages with me. Your friendships, heart, and combined wisdom are enough to crush lesser men. Yeah, I just said I’m tough.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I owe many people for their friendship, faith, support and love: Shaun Ryan and Vic, Susan Scofield, Jassen Bailey, Kevin Wallis, Shane Staley, Steve Clark, Ken Wood and crew at Shock Totem, Sam W. Anderson, Neal Hock, Mark Gunnells, James Beach and crew at Dark Discoveries, Mister Crowley, Tom Piccirilli, Wanda Clevenger, Cate Gardner, Shaun Jeffrey, Rook, Melissa, Jennifer at Book Den, Peter Schwotzer at Literary Mayhem, Darkeva, Douglas E. Wright, David G. Blake, Bec Zugor, Dani Serra, my family, Dave Thompson, Grace Patri, Ben Eads, Linda Evans, Michael Pennington, R. J. Cavender and Boyd Harris, Shane McKenzie, Tom Moran, Dale and Corrie, Bill Gauthier, Samuel Montgomery-Blinn, and many others.
The Fates lead him who will; him who won’t they drag.
PART 1: DREAM
ONE
Mark wishes I could cry. We both watch for the woman I knew as Catherine and he knew as April to materialize in the thickening mist, a lost soul searching for the motel room where her dead son sleeps.
Mark thinks it’s funny how the past grabs you like a riptide, pulls you under, makes wounds you’d thought were healed start bleeding again. It’s been a long time, yet not long at all, since he’s seen me, his little brother, and the distance between us is still an endless gulf. Even now, standing in front of him, with three feet of empty space that he knows neither of us can ever cross. And I look right through him; stare at the spruce and cedar dotting the mountains.
I’m sorry, John, he thinks, I wish you could understand what’s coming for you. This time it’s not my fault. It’s your friend’s.
It is an odd sensation, a maelstrom of emotions, watching your brother become a man, become something greater even, because he thinks I’m special. I just don’t know it yet. I probably never will because I claw at my shadows and bleed misery into a jar kept cool and private on a shelf lining my basement wall.
Mark whispers, Don’t go out today. They’re waiting. They’re preparing for you.
I brush the advice aside because even though I am tender and thoughtful, I am also stubborn. And who the hell wants to listen to their older brother?
Fall is fast approaching.
I, we, are saddened because the leaves are changing, trees sighing. We shake our heads, both of us thinking, Funny how leaves grow brightest, most beautiful, right before they die.
It has been nearly a year since we fought demons and the Blossoming began. But it isn’t over yet. The road ahead is crowded with dark trees, and dancing shadows. And I have yet to know what pain is.
I climb in the Jeep sitting on the road leading through the heart of All Saints Cemetery, and smile, though it can’t reach my eyes. It’s never easy when someone you love—a fiancé, say, who you had planned to build a better, brighter life with—said she didn’t want that anymore. And she proved it by running away, taking your brother’s son with her, and in a dark motel room she fed him a bottle of sleeping pills and outside, with the wind whispering through the trees, pulled a noose over her head, her feet swaying as if her and Death had decided to slow dance.
Mark wishes I could cry.
We both watch for the woman I knew as Catherine and he knew as April to materialize in the thickening mist, a lost soul searching for the motel room where her dead son sleeps.
* * *
For months I’d had the same nightmare where I dreamt that I was my dead brother. When I woke Monday morning, I walked behind my double wide, still in pajama pants, a soft breeze cold across my back, and trampled the path up to the graveyard. I ground my foot into fresh dirt, wanted to embrace Ethan, and hold and punch Catherine, for lying to me, for running, for dying.
I’d always been told that there were steps our minds went through to heal, and when you were done with grief it was back to business as normal, a little more hollow, but mostly whole.
Someone had lied to me.
Hollywood, I thought. And my parents.
April and Ethan’s funeral was only yesterday. It was too soon to be here, standing above them, pouring my heart out like a wounded lion—all anger and tears and claws. No one ever has the answers you need, the ones you want most, the ones you whisper as you lay alone in your bed with the lights extinguished and the lonely ache of loss settling in.
I shook my head, clenched my fist, and walked down the hill and across the yard, trying not to think as I made coffee in the kitchen, the window there like a portal looking out over All Saints and the past and a future that could never be.
The cell on the table rang. I saw it was Doug and smiled a little. I answered, imagining the big cop in his house, cuddled next to his wife, then frowned as I pictured him looming over his daughter’s grave, just as lost as me or anyone else. But he had a quiet grace, a big heart, and in the past few months he’d proven himself to a part of me that didn’t even have a right to ask such a thing.
Doug said, “You busy?”
“On the merry-go-round of life, but the ride’s all jerky. Where do you need me to be?”
“LaPorte in an hour. You can meet me at the State Police post. My friend I told you about is ready to meet you, John.”
I nodded. “Good. That’s great to hear.”
“You remember where the station is?”
I couldn’t forget. Not if I wanted to. “Yeah.”
“You sure you’re ready for this? It’s a lot for someone who has gone through what you did. You may be too fragile still.”
“I’m a glass basketball. But life’s all about risks, right?”
“No.” He cleared his throat. “You don’t need to bite off more than you can chew.”
“I know. I can handle this.”
“All right. But if you—”
“I’ll see you in an hour. Thanks.” I ended the call and inhaled, thinking about this job with Child Protective Services the state cop had lined up for me. Doug was right. It was going to be too much. I was going to see Ethan’s little face in every abused kid whose parents thought they were an ashtray, or a slave, or just the always-hungry source that sucked the vitality from their lives. As if they ever had it good.
* * *
Doug sat in a black Lincoln, wearing a black suit and crimson tie. It’s funny how easily some people can fit so well into opposing rolls: at work, the hardnosed Pennsylvania state cop, and in his personal life appearing to play the part of the Godfather. He smiled as I approached, the wind nonexistent, traffic light around downtown where the courthouse sat and people shuffled along carrying their problems close to their hearts when they grew tired of wearing it in their eyes.
He climbed out of his car looking younger than when I’d seen him yesterday at the funeral. I wanted to ask him his secret—if it was prayer, or meditation, good drugs, or nothing more than a good night’s sleep—but couldn’t, and tucked my left hand in my coat pocket as I offered him my right. We shook and I watched him flinch a little, the lines around his eyes running so deep they cou
ld hold a church meeting in there. And why not? There were broken crosses hidden beneath his flesh the same as mine, the same as most people’s. He jerked me forward and wrapped his arms around my back because he’d seen me crushed, heard the sound of my heart breaking when I identified Cat and Ethan’s bodies in the morgue. He knew that burdens broke across our scarred backs and sometimes they knocked us down, knocked the wind from our sails, cracked our ribs and made every inhalation sharp and every exhalation painful for a while, until things set and we relaxed enough to heal.
I hugged him back, neither of us embarrassed by the embrace or the tears stinging our eyes. I teased him, saying, “Don’t go all gay on me, Trooper.”
He let go and chuckled, slapped my arm with his meaty hand. “Aw,” he said. “I couldn’t do that. You’re too scrawny for me.”
We stared at each other a moment, then looked away, studying the city, wishing we could take the shadows and fold them like paper, until they were insubstantial enough that men with knives couldn’t hide in their depths and wait for men to mug and women to rape. But there was little we could do. People are people. Some of them so sick and screwed up they can never be redeemed. We started walking and passed the courthouse, a small white church, and stopped outside a clear glass door looking in on a narrow office. Doug said, “My friend’s name is Kimberly LaPorte.”
“Easy to remember,” I said.
“Her family has lived here forever. But don’t call her Kim. She hates that.” After I nodded, he held the door open and I passed through, the heat crawling across my face and hands, my guts all tied in knots. We met another door, this one with ‘X’ bands of wire embedded in glass. Doug hit a buzzer. After it chimed, he pulled the door open and smiled nervously.
There were four cubicles separated by gray walls set on casters for easy repositioning; an overweight woman I’d have put in her late forties sat at the front desk—both of them battered things, their varnish worn from time, dull even beneath the bright overhead lights. She smiled and pushed glasses up her pug-like nose. “Help you, gentleman?”
Doug said, “Here to speak to Ms. LaPorte.”
She punched a button on the black conference phone, other hand holding the cord so it didn’t get in her way, and mumbled something into the receiver. When she ended the call she looked up, and flashed yellowed teeth, saying, “She’ll be right with you.”
We waited quietly by the front desk, the heady scent of potpourri in the air, mingling with decay. And I wanted out, to turn around and walk away, because this wasn’t going to be easy. Ms. LaPorte would take one look at me and reject my application, and I’d be jobless, nothing to take up time to distract me from the grief gnawing at my heart.
A few minutes passed. I wondered what Doug had told her. He really didn’t know my work ethic. I’d given up on nearly everything at one point or another, and he knew some of it, so he wanted to lend me a hand? Why? I shifted my feet, staring at the gray cubicles, thinking how even the people we let in and get personal with don’t know us completely. And for a moment I grew angry with him, heat spreading across my scalp, wanting to say, Jesus Christ, man. I don’t need anyone’s pity. But a young woman in her mid-twenties, sleek and exotic, her pressed skirt hugging her hips in an office where everyone looked used and rundown walked confidently toward us.
She fiddled with a button on her sleeve, making sure everything was in its place. Dark brown hair fell just below her shoulders and it glowed beneath the crappy lighting. Her face had beautiful symmetry and bone structure, soft around the mouth, large eyes that twinkled as she waved at Duncan. She shook his hand and Doug kissed her cheek, and I wanted to ask her to marry me, help me get past my dead fiancée’s ghost, or just ask if I could use her, trap some of her body heat and confidence and weave it into my soul.
She turned my way and offered her hand. They’d been talking but I didn’t hear them. She said, “You going to shake my hand?”
Doug slugged my arm, and laughed, knowing I was entranced. She was older than I first thought, in her early thirties, all of the doe-like quality bled out of her by stress and determination and trials. I shook her hand, feeling like Gomer Pyle. Her grip didn’t surprise me, but the electricity in her fingers did, and I thought, Here is Proserpine come back to destroy me, disguised in the flesh of someone I need to move forward. And wouldn’t Doug just love it if I pulled my boot knife and ripped her chest open to show him that she wasn’t human at all but something else—perhaps an angel or demon, but probably a creature we didn’t have a name for yet.
She said, “You can let go now.”
“Ha!” Doug said. He massaged my shoulders and said, “Take a few breaths. She’s a sweetheart.”
“I’m sure,” I whispered. Looking her in the eyes, I said, “I’m sorry.”
“No trouble. Just don’t let it happen again.” Then she smiled, and I wished she hadn’t.
She thanked Doug for bringing me by and said to tell his wife hello. She turned to me and said, “Follow me, Mr. McDonnell.”
Her cubicle was in the back, just as cramped as the rest of them, the wooden chair I sat in uncomfortable. A stack of manila files sat on one corner of her desk and a computer monitor on the other. She laced her fingers together, rested her arms on the table and leaned forward, killing me with kindness, professionalism. She said, “This is all a kind of smokescreen since Doug recommended you and already ran a background check. Normally I’d have to take you before a board, but when it’s someone who’s highly recommended by a reliable source we can cut through the red tape. But I would like to know something if I might ask it.”
I nodded. “Feel free.”
She nodded back and smirked a little, never taking her eyes off me, and I wondered if she looked at every interviewee this way, or if she was suspicious of most, in the back of her mind maybe frightened they were pedophiles and instead of hiring someone to help the kids out it would turn out the opposite, if somehow, even during the interview a man might fool her. She leaned back and placed her hands in her lap. Her voice was sultry but not exaggerated, and I appreciated her forwardness. She said, “Why do you want this job?”
If I lied to her she’d know it, I was certain of that, but I didn’t want to lie to begin with. I leaned back a little, felt the top of the chair dig into my shoulder blades and it felt good. I opened my mouth, not sure where to start, hoping the words would come pouring out, seeing myself saying, My buddy Mike’s mom killed his little sister, buried her in the flower bed behind their mansion. Doug’s daughter was murdered, butchered, and left in the woods because Jim White thought it was the only way to save her. The world doesn’t need a savior, but it does need someone who will do something. I’m one of those people.
Kimberly smiled slightly, and said, “It’s okay, take your time.” She made a show of looking at her watch, teasing me, putting the pressure on.
“I’m not so sure that I want it,” I said, as much to my surprise as hers, only to realize a moment later that I was flirting, in my own clumsy way. Jesus Christ. It’d been so long.
Her smile disappeared and she leaned forward again, her facing going, What? and her lips moving like a fish for a millisecond, until she found her composure, suppressed her surprise, and asked, “Why would Doug recommend you if you weren’t serious?”
I shrugged. “He thinks I’d be good at it.”
She nodded, crossed her legs, but looked like she wanted to jump up and drag Duncan back in so she could ask him why the hell he was wasting her time.
I said, “These kids you guys look out for. That’s a good thing. A great thing. They aren’t learning anything about love, or respect, or privacy when they’re in a bad home with parents who aren’t any more mature, parents who are probably less mature or far more selfish than them.”
She stared at me, waiting for me to say more, but that was it. There were kids, tons of them, who had endured so much pain they didn’t know up from down and they didn’t have anyone to talk to, no one to trust. An
d it’d be that way the rest of their lives if someone didn’t intervene, hold their parents accountable, make sure the children didn’t grow up with scars someone else had inflicted on them instead of the ones they had to inflict on themselves to hopefully learn and grow into adults.
She waited.
She was patient.
I liked that.
I said, “I’d like to help protect the kids.”
She smiled again, beautifully, and pulled a file from a sliding drawer on her desk and the way the light caught the planes of her face and danced down her slender neck made my blood roar. She caught me looking and ignored it, probably used to every man she ran across playing fantasies out in their head, thinking she was so gorgeous that she had to be stupid too.
Kimberly slid paperwork across the table. “Fill these out and you can start this morning if you’d like. You won’t be a full agent until everything clears with the state, but since Doug cleared your background check we can start you off as a sort of intern.”
“Okay. I thought this would all take a lot of work.” I pulled a pen from my jacket pocket, saw her hand stop and hover above a pen in a cup next to her monitor. She laughed, softly.
I said, “I always come prepared.”
She smiled, said, “Good to know,” and looked away. She grabbed a few manila folders from the pile on the corner of her desk and flipped through them quickly as I filled in the forms. When I finished I slid the paperwork over and slipped the pen back into my coat. She slid the file over. Along the lip of it was written Jack the Ripper. Before I could ask, she explained, saying, “Jack likes to be called that. It’s his case and he’ll be training you. You’re familiar with the area too,” and her voice softened, “from what I understand.”