Rainy Fall

by Claudio Hernández

  All of them remained silent for a while. The ominous silence was only broken by another deafening thunder.

  “We have seen something like that before” Peter said, moving his head.

  “He used a cross” Burt added, touching his wet moustache.

  “What?” Charlotte said, looking startled or disgusted, or maybe both.

  “Don’t tell me you did not know that” Burt asked, touching his hat now.

  “We have read the book!” Charlotte exclaimed.

  “How great, what a way to investigate. They read books!” Burt said, sneering at them.

  “No, we don’t. We gain access to all the relevant information related to all the cases. We read each and every report.” Charlotte explained, with bulging eyes now. Her eye pressure had reached the maximum level, and her eyes were now popping out, literally.

  “Are you jerking us around?” Ethan asked, and he thought none of them would answer, that all of them would remain silent.

  “No, not at all; we are just doing our jobs” Burt answered.

  They all were thinking that it was the same story again. Burt remembered he had said it to Peter two hours before, maybe less, when they were on the phone. And yes, they were giving the FBI couple a hard time.

  14

  Once he had finished urinating and he had kept his penis back under his pajamas, John looked at this fingertips and he found out that they were red. There wasn’t much blood on them, but it was enough to ring the alarm bells. The little drop of blood, with its silky and warm touch, looked like clean and simple blood, as it was spectacularly red.

  But at least now he was breathing without sweating and he had been able to urinate, for Christ’s sake, he thought. That comforted him. He was just worried about one thing: Peter. What was to become of him if he had to go to heaven now; that whole idea gave him strength to continue living, although he knew that his hour was almost come. And he also knew that the killer would act up again during that rainy fall.

  He knew it indeed.

  15

  “The killer is wearing a black raincoat” Peter said suddenly, kneeling on the ground while the rest were silent. It was still raining heavy. “He is wearing a white mask and he is holding a big cross. It is the same sort of cross that Reverend Larry used with his victims. It is the same cross!” His eyes bulged behind his glasses. “And the raincoat is the same one, too!” He raised his voice gradually until it got high-pitched. He turned to face them and he didn’t say a word.

  While all of them were arguing, Peter ventured to touch Kaylee’s skin gently until he reached for her left hand. Then, he held it softly. At some point he thought it was still warm, but that feeling vanished like a gust of wind. Her hand was freezing and it was rigid. Peter closed his long fingers over hers, feeling the cold touch. Almost instantaneously, everything went black in his mind, and he stopped hearing people talking around. He closed his eyes and he started seeing things again after a seeming eternity. This time he was seeing thing from inside her. And the first pictures he saw were the last ones she had seen.

  He could see the white mask on her face under the light of the evening sky, the big bright cross in his hand being raised like a trophy. And he could also see the killer, covered by a raincoat, whispering to her: You are going to feel pleasure now, don’t be scared.

  Suddenly Peter felt something. It was a pain that could be very close to the pain that Kaylee would have felt in those terrible moments, when the longest part of the cross was penetrating her. It ripped her out. It was destroying her. Peter could feel her pain now, inside him, as if it was his own pain, complemented by the images. Peter’s gift had increased its force, it was stronger.

  Sheriff Burt face was contorted.

  “Can you see something else, Peter?” He asked.

  “I feel a sharp pain in my lower abdomen” Peter explained with a startled look.

  “This can’t be.” Charlotte intervened, in utter disbelief at what she was hearing. Her blue eyes hid under her closed lids and she tightened her lips.

  “How can you feel pain?” Burt wanted to know, kneeling next to Peter.

  “I don’t know. Nothing like this had ever happened to me before. I can feel the pain now and the...”

  “What?”

  “The smell; the smell of tobacco behind the white mask; the killer smokes.” Peter was now really scared and his heart was racing under his chest, pounding in his temples.

  Peter had seen the last images and he had felt her pain and the tobacco stench. Now he could perceive the dead girl’s senses. It bewildered him, and then he got frightened and panicked. Peter pulled back his hand quickly, as if he had had it inside a basket full of snakes, and then he lost the connection to her.

  “This is just a masquerade” Ethan barked, shaking his head.

  Peter remained sitting on the ground, soaking his ass.

  “I can feel her senses now. It is horrible. It is horrible.” He kept repeating over and over, while taking off his glasses, and then he started crying like a child.

  Burt put his big arms around him.

  “I’m sorry, Peter.”

  Burt’s men were stunned.

  16

  Samuel was the new reverend at Boad Hill. He was an elderly black man, with a short skinny body. He barely had any hair, but what little he had left was long and straight, like the strips of a running fan. His hair was not even grey, it was already white. Samuel suffered from acute arthritis and he had constant aches and pains, but he always said that the Lord was on his side, and he would not resist to them.

  The autopsy on Kaylee had been performed during the stormy night. It had not stopped raining. Now the clouds were giving them a rest, but they were still present and menacing. Kaylee was inside her coffin with a perfectly made-up face, her arms on her chest and her mouth and eyes closed. Her mother said she looked like she was sleeping, although she had a nervous breakdown by her daughter’s coffin.

  Her name was Kaylee, the same as her daughter’s. That was not a usual custom in the North of Maine; they failed to seek a name for their daughter. She was a tall, chubby woman, with big boobs. Her hair was short and auburn. In contrast, Bob, her husband, was a weakling with long legs that looked like stilts. The poor man was crying his eyes out inside the church that Reverend Larry had occupied nine months before, although every single thing he had touched during his stay as a reverend had been disinfected thoroughly.

  “Now that you are not here anymore, I don’t want to go on living!” The mother cried out, and then she slumped on the floor making a fleshy sound.

  His husband did not even look up.

  Samuel raised his hands towards the sky, as if he was pointing at it, but what he really meant was that the woman needed help. Samuel was a man of few words, and when he spoke, he seemed to have pulmonary emphysema. He was always tired. And he did not like the choir songs, so there was no chanting in his mass.

  Finally, two men who were sitting in the front row got up to pick Mrs. Kaylee up. One of the men puffed while trying to move her. There was a background murmur that reminded previous difficult times for Boad Hill. History repeated itself, and, unfortunately, things were not going to be different. Even though it had been decided to suspend classes for a week, the girls had been killed, like fall leaves, that very week.

  But then two men in dark suits approached the coffin so as to take it to the hearse. The coffin lid was closed.

  Both Burt Ducham and his men were at mass looking for suspicious faces. Also the FBI agents, with their new suits perfectly ironed, were there taking notes. Their sour faces were surveying all the faces among those present there.

  It was 12:00.

  At two o’clock Kaylee was resting in eternal peace, at a graveyard under hundreds of pounds of soil, in a startled town where everyone was, again, a suspect.

  17

  The phone rang at midnight. It sounded like the firemen bell, and the acoustic waves bounced off the room and inside Burt’s he
ad. At that moment, Burt had already drunk five beers and he was trying to start with the sixth one, but the can foamed over when he opened it, and his fingers got wet.

  “Fuck, it’s always the same!” He barked to the TV screen, which was the only light illuminating the room. It was raining heavily again outside. It reminded him of the preceding winter, when the snowflakes swirled around the window sill. Now they were like tears sliding across the glass.

  He left the beer can on the table where he had his feet, his fingers reaching out to pick up the phone, which was still yammering like a hysterical sheep. He picked it up and saw an old friend’s name there, although he had never met him personally. It was William, the corpse ripper.

  “Is that you, Burt?” He heard as soon as he pressed the green button.

  “No. I’m Burt’s wife. I have come back to him, you know?”

  “Oh! I am divorced too.”

  “How nice; that makes two of us, two lonely wolves.”

  Laughter was heard in the distance.

  “I am William. I am the coroner.”

  “I know. I was anxious to hear your voice.” Burt’s lips turned into a mischievous laughter.

  “You are always so funny. “

  “And you are always so punctual. It is one minute past midnight.”

  “I’m sorry. It is when my shift ends.”

  “Are there so many murders a day?” Burt asked alarmed, which was unbecoming for him.

  “No, but there are many traffic and job-related accidents” He made a pause and then William’s voice filled the telephonic line. “These days there have been several deaths because of the floods. Is it raining there?

  “No, not at all; we have only here some peeing birds.”

  This comment led to another silence. He could hear the raindrops falling on the roof. Burt thought that those raindrops should be quite big.

  “Ok, as I was saying, I am calling you to tell you the weather forecast.” William joked.

  “Ok, go on” Burt was surprised.

  “Unfortunately, I must tell you that the same story is being repeated. What we call the Modus Operandi, which means that either the killer has been resurrected, or there is someone imitating him. I’m leaning towards the second option. Thus, we could speak about a new Jack Feather Feet...”

  “I gave the killer that nickname because he did not leave a damn footprint in the snow. Now it is fall and there are storms, so there will be no footprints left in the water or on the tree leaves.” Burt interrupted.

  “But there is mud, isn’t there?” William answered quickly.

  Burt got up from the couch and started walking in front of the TV to and fro like a tennis ball. He felt his ear burning.

  “Well, in that case, I will keep calling him Jack Feather Feet.” Burt said in a tremulous voice.

  “That could be a reason; didn’t he leave any track in the crime scene?”

  “No, the water took all the mud away.” Burt was about to have an anxiety attack.

  “Yes, that’s true. You are right. Do you want to know the autopsy results?”

  “Obviously I do.” Burt was a bit annoyed about the tone of voice he had used. His belt was unbuckled and his shirt was open. His sheriff badge was about to fall down.

  “The girl’s injuries show the same pattern as the other girl’s. I think her name was Maya. She was ripped apart by a metal bar with edges. Both girls show a tearing of both womb and anus. The killer now is acting more viciously; the girls are savaged by him. He penetrates them with the murder weapon several times and then he pokes in their insides until he tears their bladder. None of these girls have died of asphyxia, they have died in pain. They most likely died of a cardiac arrest, and, of course, bleeding to death. Obviously I have not found any prints in her neck or arms. It is just as if he were using a silky thick glove. There is no semen, or saliva, or hair. I am as mystified as last winter. Who can be Reverend Larry’s copycat?”

  The rain was pouring down heavily now, and the water was coming in through the window. Burt touched the wet window with his index while holding the mobile phone in his ear.

  “I don’t know. You tell me.” Burt answered reluctantly.

  And then William hung up.

  18

  “How did it go, son?” It was the first time he had asked his son, after two days being silent about it. He had taken to writing and John was pissing blood. But now they were both sitting on the couch. It was the day after Kaylee’s burial.

  “It was weird.” It was all Peter could manage to say.

  His father winked to him, he showed a distracted smile in response, and then he plunged into confusion and silence again.

  John did not pay attention to Christie’s breasts for at least two minutes, even though they deserved it, to watch his son. He looked very scared. He remembered when he was six years old and he had touched his hand. The fucking boy had read his mind: “It is a police car!” He had said enthusiastically; that was the first time he detected something unusual in Peter, apart from being short sighted, with his glasses always slipping down his small nose. But eventually more things happened. He always knew what they were going to have for dinner just by touching his mother’s hand. One day, he called it the shine; just one word; shine. And it stayed like that until mum died. Peter had learned to live with that gift without telling anyone, but he had used it more than once in High School. He just saw normal things. He never saw any weird thing like the one he was mentioning now. John knew he was holding something back from him, so he took his hand and he spoke to him in a grave tone.

  “Peter, I haven’t got that gift you have been given by God or whoever it is, for better or worse, but I know that something is wrong with you. I have always known the way you behave and you are hiding something from me tonight...”

  “So are you, dad” Peter said suddenly, raising his head and staring at his face, which was lit by the reflection of the TV lights.

  John got a strange feeling in his empty stomach. He hadn’t had dinner that night. An intense cold went all the way down his spine and he feared the worst: He had been discovered.

  “I don’t know what you mean, son” He said with his tremulous voice. He wanted to let his hand go, but his son’s grip was like iron.

  Peter looked grave and sad at the same time.

  “Let’s play a little game, the guessing game, like when I was a kid and you had more hair on your head. You tell me what happens to you and I will tell you what’s happening to me. If you don’t accept I will know it anyway. Or maybe I know it already and that is why I am so sad.”

  John knew what Peter meant.

  “Don’t make it a tragedy” John said, pulling away his hand. Then a lacerating pain went up from his groin to his heart. He tried to disguise the pain under the dim lights, but his lips betrayed him.

  “You are worried.”

  “Come on, son, it is well after midnight and I am sleepy.”

  “This very afternoon a drop of blood has come up to your fingers. The pain in unbearable” Peter tightened all the muscles in his face. “The pain is terrible, and it’s been like this for a while.”

  He withdrew his hand all at once, while his son was grimacing weirdly, as if he was feeling pain. He did not know he could do that.

  “What’s wrong Peter? You look terrible...”

  “You are the one who is not well!” Peter had raised his voice, which was unbecoming of him. He could not recall having heard him raising his voice before, except when he was talking to him from the kitchen to be heard. He was frozen-faced.

  His father sunk into the couch, wishing to disappear from the face of the earth. The pain had gone suddenly and he could see a worried face. The TV sounds could be heard in the background now. But his son had yelled at him and he looked different.

  “You look stressed out, son” He could not think of any other thing to say, he was wide open and his mouth agape.

  “Sorry, dad” Peter said, touching his father’s
knee. He could not see or sense anything. There was no shine. It only happened when he touched bare skin. “I don’t want you to die now” And then he started crying his eyes out.

  It was the first time he saw him acting like that since his mother’s death.

  19

  Ethan and Charlotte were staying at the only motel in Boad Hill, Rooms Boad Hill. Its owner had not been able to think of any name better than that.

  It was simple.

  Double rooms cost thirty five dollars a day and they changed and clean sheets were put every morning. The owner’s name was James Sand, nicknamed The Bull because of his physical complexion and some other things that are beside the point. He was more than six feet tall and he weighed two hundred and eighty pounds. His huge belly reached his nipples. He spent all day leaning against the hall counter, where there was a little bronze bell that sparkled under the dim 40-watt bulb. A bell in the twenty-first century, for God’s sake! He had always a small TV on, with cable television. He had that background sound continuously. His wife, Lisa, had cheated on him with a Boston banker who had gone there one summer, and she had had a wild night with him at the old motel, so he lived alone now.

  All the rooms opened directly onto a parking lot, as they were small cubicles lined in a row full of doors. Every three rooms shared a bathroom. Luckily, all the rooms were free at that time of the year, except Ethan and Charlotte’s. Their Ford was the only one at the parking lot. Therefore, both Ethan and Charlotte spent quite a lot of time asking James many questions about all the murdered girls, starting from Rachel, the first girl who had appeared murdered, to Emily Carter, who was the last one before Reverend Larry had taken his own life. Meanwhile, James asked them about the girl found in the neighboring town. But the FBI did not give any explanation.

  Nor did the local people talk to them about the most fearful winter in recent years; some of the parents of those unfortunate girls used to drink until they passed out at Moll’s bar.