James sat underneath a dingy red light at the bar. His black tie was loose. At first, James Night ordered one drink, staring at it for most of the hour. Later in the evening, more men started to walk in through the front of the door. Nearly all of the patrons were short South American immigrants.
The first couple of guys sat at the bar, each next to a young lady in a neon dress. They ordered a round of Coronas for their companions. James was still at the bar by himself. He didn't notice the place, filling up. James drank the glass of Japanese whiskey, then ordered another.
It was the sight of that young woman at Queensborough Hall that pushed him over the edge. The whole time he wanted to forget her. But, he couldn't.
What do you want from me? He thought. What did I do, this time?
Quickly, James ordered another drink with the wave of the hand and a twirl of the finger. The bartender immediately recognized the signal and came over with another round. She wore a tight white shirt pouring the whiskey in his glass. The whole time James didn't look at her or the glass. As soon as she finished pouring, he slammed it down, and the liquor burned his throat.
Most of the girls at the bar were either talking or dancing with customers in the back. All of them wore short tight little neon dresses. Every once and a while, a girl approached James and whispered something in his ear. "There's an early price, my love. Two dances for the price of one."
James was about to answer her when he noticed a folded newspaper from the Queens Gazette sitting by his glass of whiskey. At first, he was surprised to see that it was already opened up to a news article about a missing hooker from Queens. The headline read, “The Meat Grinder.” Reporter Luella Mattos was starting to connect the severed body part, with missing hookers. At least she was trying to. The story featured several people who were familiar the missing streetwalker. “Violet used to call me Daisy. It wasn’t my name. But Violet helped me get off the streets. I owe her.”
It wasn’t till then that James realized that girl that’s been tracking for the last two nights was named Violet.
“It’s her,” he said to himself.
However, there was one sentence in the newspaper that caught his eye. It was as if, the night took her, said a witness, there that night. James looked at the reporter’s name. Luella Matos had struck again, and she was a relatively new reporter on the missing person beat. He recognized her when he headed into the station the other morning.
Stop thinking about this, he thought. He pushed the paper aside.
By midnight, Violet would not be his problem.
The dead always disappeared in three days. On the last day, the ghost vanished by midnight. Then, James took two sips from the glass of whiskey. The first was to help him forget about the article. The second was to help him forget who he was.
It was at that moment when a young woman leaned against the bar and got his attention. It was her, the girl in the violet dress. James remained calm, while she spoke.
“Why do you hate passing by the cemetery, James?” asked Violet.
James remained quiet, as she took a seat next to him with her legs crossed and leaning in his direction. He could feel the side of her body rubbing up against his.
“Is this why you hate cemeteries, James? Because you can see people like me?”
James glanced at her in the mirror but remained quiet.
“You go to an incredible length to avoid the cemetery, on the way to and from work. You hardly even notice that you are even doing it.
She was about to take her sunglasses off.
“No don’t do that,” said James. He didn’t want to see her eyes. He didn’t want to know anything more about her. Again, she told him about waking up in Calvary Cemetery.
James stayed quiet and sat back in his seat. He took the scene at the bar in the reflection of the mirror.
In the mirror, she wasn’t there.
Then, he downed a whiskey in one gulp and quickly ordered another one. A dozen more drinks and the girl in the violet dress wouldn’t be a problem anymore.
Why does she have to bring up the cemetery, James thought, as he looked out into a void of lights, drugs, and music.
In an instant, she appeared on the opposite side of him. She touched his shoulder and arms, “You have to help me,” she told him in his ear. “No one else can.”
“What is it that you want,” he asked her with the rim of his glass just below his mouth.
“I need you to help me find my killer.”
“What a twisted world where dead birds sing?’ James said himself, as he took another drink and the room started to spin.
“What did you say?” asked the bartender who placed a new glass of whiskey in front of him.
“Nothing.”
James sat there thinking, she was right. James Night always hated walking past any cemetery, since he was a kid. How did she know that? She must have been tracking him the whole time. She was looking for a pattern, for something that she could exploit. It impressed him. I guess, if I were dead, I would do the same thing too for a chance at redemption.
James bought a beer and stepped away from the bar. He walked in between several tables and found an empty chair by the wall facing the dance floor. He looked at his watch.
By midnight she should be gone.
All he had to do was wait her out. He could do that. He had done it a couple of times before. However, this one felt different from all the dead that crossed his path. He could not explain why. For James, the apparitions always passed over in three days. It was a constant. He was sure that the girl in the violet dress would be no different.
But, there was an itch in the back of his neck.
It had been a year since he last listened to the dead. He wasn’t going to start tonight, either.
However, James still couldn’t help wondering how the girl found him. Until now, he was pretty good at evading these kinds of ghost. It was pretty easy to blend in and pretend that they weren’t there. That was all he had to do.
There were even times when he felt sorry for them, walking around without a clue in the world about what was happening to them. It was kind of sad at times, watching spirits drown in quicksand. But, he couldn’t interfere with them. They were all on their journey. Besides, he almost died last time he got involved. No way, he was going to go through that again. It was better to say nothing to the dead.
That was his first rule, never wake the dead.
By now, it was past midnight.
James Night had had more than enough number of drinks and accomplished what he set out to do, to obliterate the girl in the violet dress from his mind. And he did it.
Before he left, he looked for her at the bar and only saw a couple of men with girls sitting on their laps. They were all still drinking and laughing, having a good time.
James was tired and ready to go home and pass out.
Then, another young woman approached him. But he didn’t say a word. He got up, placed a pair of sunglasses on his face and stumbled outside.
A half hour later, James was on the 10th floor of his apartment building. Whenever he arrived, he always went to the bathroom first.
James rested his sunglasses on the rim of the sink, and they fell on the white tile floor. He flipped the light switch on, and he looked at his eyes. James leaned his face close to the mirror, examining his face. He wore a pair of hazel contact lenses that he plucked out and dropped in a solution. Again, he looked at his eyes, wishing what he saw was not real.
Since childhood, James Night's eyes were pale white, colorless, pupil-less. They were as white as milk. They had been that way since he was young. No matter how many times he saw himself like this, he never got used to it. The sight of his own eyes always unsettled him.
The only word that always came out of his mouth was, why.
Even until now, he never found out why they were as they were.
Before James Night went to sleep, he reminded himself that he had to focus on facts, instead of rel
ying on those voices.
“Crazy girl,” he said, as he fell dead asleep on his bed.
Later that night he had a dream. He climbed the steps in front of the Queens Borough Hall when he saw the girl in the Violet dress by the front door. He gave her two glances. She looked beautiful. James looked up at the sky and saw the cloud eclipse the morning sun and the morning turned gray throughout the streets.
"Excuse me. I need your help. Can you help me?" Violet asked him, as she took off her oversized black sunglasses. Her eyes were pale and dead, and it terrified him.
James nodded and pointed to the building, “Sorry. Not today. You should ask someone in there.”
Suddenly, the smile fell from Violet’s face and replaced with anger.
"Why can't you help me! I know that you can see me. Why can’t you help me?”
James turned around and started to walk away from her. He ignored her, as he walked across Queens Boulevard. James wanted to forget he ever saw her, the girl in the violet dress.
Before he reached the other side of the street, he turned around to make sure he placed a safe distance between him and her. Then, he heard her voice, again. She appeared next to him, grabbed and yelled at him.
“I swear to god James! You're going to die, old and alone if you keep down this path! Don’t you want to know who you are!”
Then, Violet threw her sunglasses aside. Her eyes were as white as milk. In an instant, she bit him in the neck, biting him so hard that a good amount blood started to drip over the sidewalk. He began to choke and lose consciousness, as everyone circled James to watch him die.
Suddenly, James Night woke up choking from his nightmare, in a cold sweat. His eyes were like milk in the moonlight. It was 4 am in the morning.
“Jesus” he coughed.
Then, he noticed something by the window. It was an outline of woman’s figure. He rubbed his face, and he was frightened by her. It was her, the girl in the violet dress. Quickly, James turned on the light and asked her.
“Why are you still here. You are supposed to be gone.”
Violet was in his apartment, staring at him. But, she didn’t say a word.
At that moment, it appeared to him that the peace and quiet that lasted for a year was no longer going to last. The girl in the violet dress should have disappeared by midnight. That was always how it always worked. But, she wasn’t gone at all. He threw his face in his hand. Now, she knew where he lived. For some reason, she was still bound to this plane of existence, and that realization of this changed James.
The last thing he ever wanted was change.
“Will you help me?” asked Violet.
James understood that if she didn't go in three nights, something was wrong. James knew that he could not spend his life trying to avoid her. If he did not help her, she would haunt his days and nights, even his dreams. Okay. There was only one way to get out of this
“Okay. You win,” James told her.
Violet got up from leaning on the window sill and walked over to his bed and sat on the edge by James’ thigh. He instinctively looked away from her.
Then Violet leaned over, by his ear and asked, “Don’t you want to know who you are, James? Don’t you?”
Yes, thought James, as he opened his eyes to look into hers. It was at that moment when she revealed everything that happened to her that night she went missing, when the beast snatched her of the street.
For a moment, he felt the sharp claws wrap around him.
9
Shadows of the Night
Detective James Night had one more thing to do. He had to make sure that Violet wasn’t lying. Since he had had ghost lie to him before.
James entered the surveillance tombs underneath the headquarters of the NYC Police Department. Throughout his time there, James hoped that Violet was wrong about everything that she told him.
James showed the guard on his badge and his identification, and they let him through two glass doors down a long white corridor. At the end of the hallway, there was a door that opened up to a room filled with row after row of flat-screen televisions. Down here, the police watched everything that happened in the city.
They called it the Bull Pin.
James first spoke to the supervisor on duty whose office was right by the entrance and away from the others. From there, he kept an eye on everyone in the room and everything that they were watching. But, behind the supervisor’s desk, there was a camera too.
Then, the supervisor directed him to speak to the first technician at the end of the row. He walked up three steps.
“I need your help to locate some footage for a case that I am working on.” James handed him a list of cameras stationed in the street and timeframes for the query.
“Of course Detective.”
A few minutes later, the screen filled with several video files that the technician opened up, one at a time. The first video was Queens Boulevard at night by Foxy’s Dinner. James' eyes widened when he spotted a woman walking in a tight dress. It was her. It was Violet. She was telling the truth.
“Freeze the video and zoom in on this figure here.”
“Here?”
“Yeah and email it to me.”
“Alright done.”
“Now, open the last two videos together and fit them both on the screen.”
“Not a problem detective.”
The last two videos were from two cameras along Queens Boulevard, right by the cemetery, where Violet disappeared. James scanned the video and saw mostly an empty street. Then, he saw her. She looked small on the screen. She was crossing Queens Boulevard, like how she said, with a cigarette in her hand. She’s lit another cigarette and started walking down the sidewalk. She’s getting smaller on the video. Suddenly, the light’s on the street go out on the video for a second. Now, she was gone.
“Play the last video.”
The technician did, and the picture was of Queens Boulevard by the cemetery from a different angle.
“Scan to where the street light shuts off. Okay stop and go ten seconds back.”
The video was a grainy, as Violet walked down the street. James made out a cigarette in her hand, the one she just lit. She was about to walk out of frame when the street lamp goes out. Just like before, the video fizzles out for a second and comes back on. She is gone.
“Freeze it.” James leans over the technician to get a better look at the image.
“Zoom here on the sidewalk.”
He did, and there was an image of her cigarette on the sidewalk, still burning. Everything that Violet told him about that night was true. She told James that something snatched her. Violet didn’t know what. Afterward, she woke up in the cemetery.
“Will that be all, Detective?” asked the tech.
It was at that moment when the surveillance supervisor, called to him. “Detective, you have a phone call.”
James turned to the tech, “Yes. Just email me those images and that will be all. Thank you.”
Then James walked over to the supervisor's desk and grabbed the landline.
“Detective Night speaking.”
“It’s Charlene.”
“What’s going on?”
“Someone else has gone missing.”
“Another streetwalker?”
“No.”
10
Hanging Garden of the Beast
I drove to Woodside in Queens. Violet sat in the back seat, like a shadow for most of the ride. The radio in the car buzzed with life, “Detective Night, over.”
I grabbed the walkie talkie from the dash. “Approaching location now. What’s the address and the guy's name?”
From the location relayed by dispatch, I knew the neighborhood well. I thought about when I was younger, running through these dark streets, without a care in the world. I smiled, remembering that I kicked a soccer ball so hard that a car alarm went off. I placed my hand out the window of the car to feel the wind.
“Where did you go, James?” as
ked Violet.
Back then, I rode my bike from one side to the other, without a care in the world. But everything changed when the dead started to talk to me.
“So this is where you grew up, James?”
I ignored Violet. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to encourage her to speak more than I already had. But, it was too late.
“Shouldn’t we be heading to the cemetery, James?” Violet asked.
Shut up. Stop taking. I kept telling myself.
“Doesn’t that mean something to you? It was in the cemetery where I first woke up.”
“I know. I know.”
“Doesn’t that mean I died inside the cemetery?”
“I’m sorry, Violet. But, I don’t know if I can trust you, just yet. I can only follow up on facts that I collect on this plane of existence, not yours. Can you understand that?”
“Really?”
“Yes. If I start listening to you as a primary source than this whole case would be screwed."
"How?"
"By clues, that come from a place where natural laws don’t exist. Can you respect that?”
“Yes. I will as long as you are trying to find the person who murdered me. Then, do what you gotta do.”
“Thank you. Otherwise, your clues might send me down a road, that I’m not ready for. Last time, I spoke to someone like you and believed them, I almost died. I don’t want to die, Violet. There was a time that I thought I did. But not anymore.”
“Fine. We’ll do it your way, for now,” Violet took a drag from her cigarette.
In the car, Violet sat in the backseat. She was a ghost, disappearing every time, the orange street light passed over her dead eyes. From time to time, I looked over at her.
“What else do you remember?” I asked.
“I told you about what happened to me. I told you everything that happened to me that weekend. I don’t know who took me or killed me. The whole thing is messed up. Shit. It might be possible that whatever grabbed me, may not be human.”
Never Wake the Dead Page 6